Umm, I don't see how playing Halo against your family can replace simply talking to them on the phone
Well with all Xbox Live games you talk directly to the other players using the rather funky head set you get when you sign up (and the new inbuilt dashboard I gather, which I've not used [I'm not sure if it's been rolled out yet]).
It's actually cheaper to by an xbox do do this too it's just a shame there is not camera for the xbox as there is for the PS2 (at least there isn't as far as I'm aware).
If this were a site in Europe I would expect it to be written in a European language, use a European date format, and use "," as the decimal separator, not "." like in the US.
I would expect a web page to display a date that conforms to the ISO standard, as do the W3C. It's not the format commonly used in my country either, but I realise I'm publishing on a global medium to a global audience and that's why I use it.
Are you going to attack Asia now for not using a Western alphabet?
Most of Asia (including China, Japan, Korea and others) already use YYYY-MM-DD as their date format, so no I won't be critisising them as they have prefectly sensible date formats and, along with much of Scandinavia, are ahead of most the rest of the world when it comes to using logical date notation formats.
Attacking and riddiculing someone for not being "like you" (using your favorite date format, running your favorite operating system) is really quite a bit more arrogant than someone using their own culture
I'm not attacking a group for not being 'like me' I'm attacking them for doing what is clearly (as far as the rest of the world thinks) the wrong thing, and pointing out that MM/DD/YYYY is the wrong thing is something I am quite comfortable with.
Your simply ignoring the arguments of logic and common sense and attempting to introduce political correctness into the argument. You don't have to be a maths wizard or software developer to see why it's a bad format, but I really hope your not a programmer if you can't see what makes it a bad format.
The idea is that it's more logical and more useful is based on:
(a) The units are in order of significance (Days in Months in Years). It is very definately not arbitrary.
MM/DD/YYYY is however entirely arbirtary and much harder to organise or sort because of that.
While the ISO date standard of YYYY-MM-DD is certainly ultimately superior to either of the other two methods, you can still much more easily create an effetive sorting system based on DD/MM/YYYY than MM/DD/YYYY because there is some order (implied by the relative significance of the units) to the notation of DD/MM/YYYY.
This is in the same way that HH:MM:SS is the most appropriate way for us to read time (it features most to least significant, like the ISO date standard), but if I had to choose I'd rather have SS:MM:HH (least to most significant) than MM:SS:HH (which is entirely arbirtary and mirrors the middle-to-least-to-most significant format of MM/DD/YYYY)., Of course it's also the hardest to index as well as to manually prase, though of course you could 'get used to it' if you had to, and if you'd grown up with that it I'm sure it would seem entirely normal, but it still wouldn't be very sensible to an external observer.
By way of another, but practical example:
If you can imagine 3 stacks of say 100 cards each with a different date in the top right corner, one stack with dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format, another in the DD/MM/YYYY format and another in the MM/DD/YYYY format. Try thinking about sorting these and then imaging retreving items from the stack quickly based on the date. Alternatively, try knocking up a Perl/Python/etc script to do the same and see which is the most alkward format to deal with.
And:
(b) when reading from left to write your likely to want to know the day first (on the basis that your looking at something recent, or even current and want to know what day it is, or alternatively, on what specific day in the last few days something was done).
I still always use YYYY-MM-DD myself as it's just so much better (even if it does mess with the bank tellers who all seem to get confused by it and ask me what it is).
You want us to die because we use a different date format? Isn't that a bit absurd?
I expect it's not specifically related to the date format, but rather the quite astounding arrogance and destructive provincialism your demonstrating which is what's so objectionable.
But you'd have to clarify that with the poster.
Seriously YYYY-MM-DD is the only really agreed on format, and MM/DD/YYYY only gets the year out of place (its usually left off because it is normally obvious). DD/MM/YYYY, is just backwards; Nothing wrong with using it but I don't see the point in advocating it.
YYYY-MM-DD us not merely 'the only really agreed on format' it's the ISO 8601 International Standard format for date notation. It is the most useful format for direct digital manipulation and more than that, it's a practical and symbolic political compromise between the predominant format in North America, and the predominant format in the rest of the world.
DD/MM/YYYY is most useful for humans who use western left-to-right languages, this is why the western world (with the exception of North America) uses this format when writing dates.
MM/DD/YYYY is useless screwup of a system used by North Americans that is neither optimal for digital manipulation nor for parsing from left to right.
People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System. IME, they also tend not to be programmers (for reasons that should be obvious). It's demonstrably inferior to both systems (both for digital manipulation and for manual parsing) and this is why it restricted to common use only in North America. Like the Imperial System, it's an anachronism best left in the past where it belongs (though, also like the Imperial System, it appears that people will continue to use it for quite some time, no matter how obviously inferior it is to avalible alternatives).
I did read the article, and by which I mean actually read it, not skimmed it and inferred meaning into it.:P
That he showed it in a interview as 'an example of his practical ability' has no bearing on whether or not it was actually released (where possible, I show released and public examples of my software when in interviews).
The article simply says this about it:
His game, Crime Inc, which was developed between 1991 and 1993, involved gangs taking part in street crime.
It does not actually indicate if the game was released to the public. I'd like to know if it was, and if anyone has played it/seen it/knows of screen shots/reviews of it.
It remains to be seen whether is case has merit (like most readers I strongly suspect it does not) but it is a legitimate type of claim - I don't think it's like Carmack claming he had rights over all FPS's (which I think he very possibly could in the US, if he had a patent and pending no prior art). It's much more like Carmack claming rights over a 'game set in the future in which a space marine is sent to Mars and faces single handed armed combat with a large number of zombies and demons' (and the credibility of that claim would depend on exactly what ideas have been 'ripped off'). It's my understanding that the content of the game is the issue of debate (though I'd love to see more of Crime Inc, to know if their are other obvious similarities).
Somewhat iterestingly, I used to work in the building opposite DMA design in Dundee (and look out the window at them, less than 100 yards away), when I worked for SOL/Scottish Telecom. Dundee is a city with two Universities, and an economoy of low wages, mostly in the retail sector (due to complete collapse of industry in the area 1900's). As a result of being a small city, a good distance from any other similar sized cities, and having two Universities (yet with a low wage economy) it has no shortage of skilled workes who can be employed for far below market rates, and in the case of students and given the prestige of DMA, you only need to pay them very little indeed (you basically just need to feed them pizza).
I have heard many times from quite a few people that this is exactly what they did - employ interns as 'cheap/free labour'. This was not entirely a bad deal fo those employed, and they did so willingly, but if they are willing to take such gross advantage of students (who don't really know their own market worth, not only because they arnt in the market place, but because Dundee is not quite in touch with 'rest of the word') then it may set you thinking maybe they are willing to rip off someone interviewies idea.
If you have the ability to make dummy robot soldiers that were useful for training, you may as well send them into battle (as long as you can afford to replace them when they inevitably get blown up in battle).
Until they are useful enough to be used in real battle soldiers are clearly better off training as they do now - against each other. Likely targets don't have robots of their own, and arnt likely to have any soon, so training against them is not going to be useful for troops.
It would be a easier to make remote controlled camera enabled battle robots than to make free thinking (or computer controlled) simulated battle trainer robots (and of course, the former of which actually we have and use now, as the US have used in Afghanista, they are just not anthropomorphised)
The bad news is it's not so much 50 USD every couple of years for a console Timmy already has, it's more like 250 USD every couple of years so Timmy can have the a new console and another 50 USD every couple of months so he can have the latest copy of EA Sports' latest-and-greatest NFL/NHL/NBA/Football title.
But I still agree with you, even at those prices it can be cheaper and certainly easier - so it's not hard to see why this happens, it's a huge undertaking to take your child to a sport and be involved, and much more so if you have two or three children.
When I think of "ravel", I think of the third definition listed on dictionary.com
3. To tangle or complicate.
To "unravel" makes perfect sense. To untangle.
That's a legitimate question and is a great example of how the language has evolved in an apparently illogical way that has resulted in something we now take for granted as being logical.
Origionally, when it began use in the English language ravel actually meant what unravel means today (more or less). It meant a loose thread. Common usage of the 'un' prefix in other words lead people to add the prefix to the word because it was more intuative that way, even though the 'un' was entirely redundant.
There was no legitimate reason for sticking 'un' in front of 'ravel' because they ment the same, but people did, and it stuck.
Over time 'ravel' (without the 'un' prefix) has come to mean the opposite of unravel, because people have thought it's more intuative that way.
Of course you could argue that they could just have left the damn world alone in the first place, but they didn't because there were adapting the language to make it more intuative, and thus simpler.
I'm very comfortable with this evolution of language, Amercian English (for example) has many words in it that have very different meanings (or in some cases, simply do not exist at all) in other forms of English, like British English. But some people always try to get in the way of evolution (which is rather irratating and pointless, but they do it anyway as luddites have done through the ages).
That's not to say that you can't or should not speak out against certain changes in our language, but if it get's to the stage where it's under discussion, it's going to happen anyway and it's just a cause of adapting to the 'moving of the cheese'.
When society decides to change the rules (as it did with the usage of unravel (just to stay with that example)) it's just a case of looking at the new change and trying to understand the reasons behind that change, because you can't hope to stop new words like this gaining momentum and you just have to decide whether to roll with them or instead die an angry old man.
Some people cope badly with these changes because they cope badly with change generally (they are not good at having others 'move their cheese').
The word gets little or no use outside of the United States (so in British English, or International English I'd say it's use was incorrect, though obviously the intended meaning is still clear) but it's been used in the US since the begining of the last century and I'd say that it's in almost every single current American English dictionary you can find is pretty good evidence that critics are really achieving nothing by harrasing others for using it.
(They are also being hypocrites because there are plenty of newer words that are less legitimate but that they use quite happily, but then grammer nazi's are often like that. )
I do love they way you managed to completely contradict your own arguments in your own defense, what a novel form of argument!
Did you really write that all yourself, or did you bribe an 8 year old to do it for you?
Just kidding, I'm sure you wrote that yourself, it displays all of your usual vitriol (worthy of any 13 year old).
I'm loathed to think your a graduate of the American education system - I'd hate to think that your countries education system was so far down the toilet that resorting to repeating the phrase 'who cares!' incessantly makes for some kind of legitimate defense of your hostile and ill founded beliefs. It's like something out of a scripted episode of Jerry Springer *imagines user clicking their fingers and making odd neck twitching movements while arguing*...
Looking at your history of posts, you display quite a bit of tedious grammer nazi behavior, and a lot of generic 'angry (and rather ignorant) young male' behavior. I suggest you curtail that behavior, try and get an education and come back to us all when your a more worthy member of the human race (and less pointlessly hostile). You could do with a wider perspective too.
If you must rant, at least find a subject your even remotely understand before you go off half-cocked reciting populist aguments about which you understand little. Americans often have trouble in dealing with the English langauge though, so I can't say I'm surprised are your lack of distinction between American English and English generally.
It's been used in the United States for nearly 80 years. It's been in use a lot longer than most words we use every day. It's also present in many American dictionaries. American English, International English and British English are not the same language any more than Scots is the same as English.
Further more, language evolves; some people are simply too short sighted to comprehend that the purpose of language is to allow communication. The use of 'irregardless' vrs. 'regardless' does not impede that purpose. You'd have to be particularly dull-witted not be able to infer the meaning even if you had never heard the former before.
This evolution in the language has some about because it's intuitive and logical for many users (given the use of irrespective and regardless) and that's exactly how the English language (the International, British and American variants) has evolved into what it is today. We have gained many words in precisely this manner.
There are many other words in the English language which also use redundant prefixes, even simple words such as 'unravel'. One would assume from the beatings of people like yourself that it should not be considered a word and that we should exclusively only use the original 'ravel' instead; the 'un-' prefix being mysteriously so objectionable to linguistic conservatives like yourself, no matter how much more intuitive it seems.
Recording in the cinema (or intent to record, because that's intent to commit a crime) is of course already illegal.
This law is pointless because it offers no new protection at all (and I think those behind the film production have a legitimate right to production, making movies is a risky and costly business, video stores are littered with expensive and costly failers - high celebity actors demand phenominal fees). This just isn't a legitimate or even meaningful way of try to protect them. Pointless laws like this get passed all the time and it's a waste of tax payers money. Our money. Your money.
In 5-10 years when every standard phone has a high res digital camera it's going to look even more rediculous than it is now but those responsible for it conveniantly won't be around to blame.
My phone [a Motorola A920] already records video in MPEG4 and, it being a 3G, I already watch things like the news headlines on it, which it streams over it's 3G connection, I'd be just as happy to watch a movie of the same quality, I know I've certainly watched videos of worse quality on occation).
Sadly, we have laws just like this that were passed in the 80's and 90's that related to recent or preceived problems at the time (e.g. with video games), but that are already out of date and worth less after just 10 years and they were pointless because they were already covered by existing legislation. These are laws that should not ever be implimented in the first place, as not only are they costly to impliment they have a nasty habbit of getting in the way and biting us in the ass later because they can be applied in unexpected ways (because they wern't thought through properly in the first instance).
It's clearly it's a waste of time because you have to logically include phones and PDA's (like Sony's Clie Series) as well and can can't ban phones from the cinema because people just won't go to the cinema.
The lack of understanding of real, modern issues in high public offer is something I find very disturbing. The UK has an equally bad track record and it's due simply to a lack of understanding and distinct lack of vision from a generation that arn't able to grasp technology and it's implications for politics and society (and thats as it stands at the moment, never mind them trying to fathom how it might impact our lives in the future).
Thank you for proving my point. Translating into US$, that's 42GB/month for about $45 a month -- $1 per GB.
No that doesn't prove your point - it only serves to show how little you know or seem to be able to understand - that INCLUDES 40GB of space (rather than costing, as you said, '1/month/100MB of space') and of course the physical the dedicated server itself (which you get to keep).
According to your suggested pricing the whole lot would cost in the region of 450 USD per month, not 45 USD.
Oh, look mummy a muppet! Can I take him home and keep him (in the basement, where I can torture him)?
Harsh, but fair! - As we will see...
So, how do you propose to pay for web hosting and bandwidth?
I use money, what do you use? Big gold bars by the sounds of it (going by how much you seem to willing to pay for simple, cheap, easy to provide services)...
A good webhosting provider will run $1/month/100MB of space, and $1-$2/GB of transfer. If they're charging less, don't expect any sort of reliability.
No only do I, for example, get my 2 MB ADSL for 70 UKP Month, I get 250MB Webspace with it too, with full CGI (Perl, PHP) & SSH (+ other value ads) and it's very reliable. Hell, they arn't even the cheapest either, I'm just too slack to move!
I get 250 MB of webspace, with no pre-determined limit (it's based on a case by case basis, if you don't take the piss, they don't take any notice, which is how most places work, because they can't be bothered with hard or soft limits, it just doesn't pay financially to do it, most service providers just check for gross offenders).
So I get my solid ADSL for a reasonable price (quite cheap by UK standards for 2 MB [unquota'd]) and I get effectively free web hosting thrown in.
Good greif, you can get a DEDICATED SERVER with over 42 GB of transfer per month (which you can spread over a year to average it out) FOR LESS THAT 30 UKP A MONTH! [and extra transfer is 1 UKP per GB].
I spend more than that going to the pub in weekday evening! It's hardly breaking the bank is it?
If, by some good fortune, your website does more than say 50 GB of traffic a month and your not able to think of other ways than just advertising to make revenue, then it would best for all concerned if you just kept off the internet and left us alone to have grown up conversations.
People would use the internet if there was no on-line advertisement sponsored content on it at all. To attempt to argue that it's some kind of economic requirement for the world web web to function is to be argumentative and feeble minded.
This is a bit of an over-simplification. The abstraction layer must fill in all the gaps of missing functionality in the less-powerful database backend(s). Most likely they are taking advantage of some of Oracle's advanced features, which would essentially need to be re-implemented. Not an easy task. If it's a cheesy web site, then sure, use ADOdb or something. That works because you're using minimal SQL that everybody supports.
I think there is some fair comment in that - but I do think that even if you do have to fill the gaps in to kludge for a lack of, say, nested transactions, it doesn't have to be an immense amount of work. You only need to cover for the specific functionality your application actually needs.
For example, if you wanted to take advantage of nested transactions, it's not particularly hard to write the functionality required into an existing function which wraps the request (and insert/roll back data (i.e. re-insert previous values, temporarily held in memory) as required). Writing a wrapper like that for specific types of actions really isn't that difficult or time consuming to do (unless the program is a nasty hash to begin with).
I worked on a project with transactions that had complicated inter-dependencies, multiple conditions for failure, and the ability to handle partial failure by committing and reporting failures - as well as refund all the costs involved in a transaction in the event of a single frailer condition [the action was dependant on the failure condition] (and all the while locking the funds and 'pre-paid tokens' as needed from each department budget involved and only refunding them if warranted - so the entire operation could ultimately be considered atomic by the client).
The instance I'm thinking of had multi-tired levels of funding to clear, with multiple shared pools to pull both funds and 'pre-paid tokens' from (in some cases one, both, neither or either were required for a successful transaction - with the availability of both being determined based on the contents of shared pools in an inter-dependent hierarchy which allowed for flexible budgets and pre-paid token reserves by allowing resources to be shared between departments, virtual groups and the company as a whole - as desired (or not) by the various administrators at each level of the organisation, rules which were all subject to change dynamically by them), so it's fair to say it was reasonably non trivial.
I realise that might not make a lot of sense (might make more sense if you re-read it a few times:), but all I'm really getting at was that it did a lot of things that are (as I seem to have proved;) quite complicated to explain, but in a way that was trivial to use as a user and to use the functions in the front end, because the libraries and the backend processes were done well.
It's completely backend independent and all you'd need to do to change the format it uses was change a single library file to match your DB. It could use SQL, BDB, or CSV or XML file for data storeage and not care about the data input/output, but you'd still be able to take advantage of advanced features of a better backend because of the carefully chosen core functions (and getting them right was absolutely vital). Tedious and deliberate planning (and ensuring you get the time to do it) was all that's really required to achieve this. I spent months planning, long before I started coding any of this.
The key (as I'll admit to having banged on about on/. before:) was simply deliberate and considered planning of development beforehand. I feel as long as you plan ahead and have a solid foundation, your able to cope with the curveballs you'll inevitably get thrown (and not have to re-dig your foundations later).
Actually, abstraction from the database is exactly the issue.
Having done commercial code using the same practices and having used it to convert my own GPL project (from storing nested and dependant data as XML to SQL of all things) at Savannah to I can testify to this. It's easy if you actually design your software (not just sit down and bash the keys randomly like a code monkey), it just requires planning and a commitment to professional practice, specifically a commitment to good design, which should be considered professional integrity.
It's trivial to change one function to behave in a completely alternate matter and give the same output. Sometimes you do need to change a handful of places to accomodate a change in design, no matter how forward thinking you've tried to be, but if significant parts of the program need to be re-written to cope then it hasn't used abstraction at all.
If you don't get that - then I'd say you don't really get the point of abstracting at all. The idea is not to mimic the functions of the DB you are calling in some redundant fashion, it's to allow them to obtain the data from any DB, even a CSV file if you wish, without the rest of the program even being aware you've switched formats.
Nuts to this! Seriously! Why should we contribute to this?
It makes sense for them to do this port. They should have made it work on at least either Postgres/MySQL in the first place. It's their own fault, they have clearly dug their own hole and now they want us to give them money to buy a ladder to help them out of it.
If the program was coded well, it wouldn't be more than a few days work (they should just need to change a very small number of functions, the ones that act as an abstraction layer to the DB). If they haven't, that's their problem and they have a lot more than just backend portability to worry about.
In even reasonably complex projects I always use an abstraction layer so I have the option to change the DB at will. In fact, you might say I use two layers - one layer for the DB, and another layer in the form of the functions I call to get data (which call the DB layer), and I usually have a set of 'core' functions which are not called directly from any user facing elements but only from libraries which do the actual data retrieval.
I'd also add it acts as an excellent way of reducing the number of bugs - by forcing the use of abstracted interfaces I find the enforced simplicity of the interfaces cuts down on the bug rate (by breaking down the code in to easily maintainable and re-useable chunks with easy to test input and output).
So in this case I say:
Lack of abstraction == no cookie for you! Bad developer!
This is no different from scanning an the invoice and blotting out the dollar amounts and account information then posting it on the web. Doing that will get you fired almost anywhere.
Apart from that he didn't do that - he didn't post internal confidential company documents he took a picture of the back of a delivery truck showing Apple products ariving at Microsoft. Well we already know they buy Apple products. How on earth do you imagine they write all that Mac software?
The company I work for use Cisco routers and Sun servers! Oh no, will I get fired now? Oh that's right, of course I won't because your talking crap.
As it's already public knowledge that Microsoft use Apple products in house, there is no case for a breech of trust argument.
The image and comments on the blog were entirely innocuous and this situation was handled incompotently.
If you don't think firing someone over something to trumped up and innocuous falls in to the category of wrong and entirely inappropriate then you have a severly broken sense of what's right and what's wrong and would do well to consult a shrink (in case your a latent sociopath).
If I posted pictures of my companies semi-secret lab on the internet for all to see I would think I'd get fired too
The picture is the point - It's not a secret lab, it's one entirely innocuous picture of the back of truck.
It's in no way comparable with someone posting multiple pictures of a 'semi-secret lab'.
It's well known that of course Microsoft has PowerPC systems (how else would they write all the Mac OS software they do?). So the secrecy on that topic isn't an issue.
Somehow I can't see this head line: 'Burger King worker takes a picture of a McDonalds Milkshake in a Burger King car park, post it on his homepage, gets fired.'.
It's so objectionable because its just trivial nonsense over a non-event.
He didn't in any way portray his employees in a bad light and their is no breach of security here. He stated MSCopy building is near the Goods Delivery building (something that someone in Security objected to, according to the blog) but that blissfully ignores the fact that the buildings are going to be clearly sign posted in particular the Goods Delivery Area (and it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out).
There are no legitimate concerns here that warrant firing an employee, just a trumped up power tripper in Security/HR/middle management with nothing better to do than callously harm in the lives of others - all they have succeeded in doing is making the world just a little gloomier.
I can't think the mother of the person responsible for firing this hapless employee would be proud of their offspring's achievements that day - and the same goes for those involved who stood by and let it happen. I think the middle manager who stood for this and failed to stand up for his (even temporary) employee is spineless wonder and ought to be ashamed of themselves. We are always telling our children to stand up against decisions we think are wrong and unjust, it's sad that we as adults seldom practice what we preach.
Like many things in life, it happens because other people are afraid to stick their necks out and say 'No, wait a minute, that's not fair.' and put their foot down.
What's happend to this employee is clearly not right, and you shouldn't need your mother (or another Slashdot poster) to show you that.
I remember a guy getting a $30,000 bill from Earthlink because he hosted a vid of Halo before they announced the planetside stuff you're talking about.
And you suggesting that proves your theory how, exactly?
The game play was origionaly designed, before they had done the engine. That's public knowledge. That was in around 1996. Something more akin to their origional vision for the project was eventualy released in the form of Myth : The Fallen Lords, in 1997.
Meanwhile, the origional project they were developing was taken in a very new direction, and HALO was born. This was during that period (though it continued to evolve).
The intial video was not released until after all this (2 years after), during a Macworld Keynote speech. Reports of the gameplay were already being discussed by Bungie and being reported back from Macworld.
The initial public video was not released until that keynote in mid 1999. You can find the following on Bungie.com's website (note this is actually dated a few months later, but that's the best The Way Back machine has - it has not archived halo.bungie.com/.net): Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void, you must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air. The epic single-player game is complemented by a role-based, cooperative multiplayer team game. Three players might take the roles of driver, shotgun and rear gunner of a light, fast all-terrain vehicle, roaring and bouncing over uneven ground toward the enemy fortress, ducking under a hail of fire from alien aircraft screaming overhead.
Not only was this sort of info reported at Macworld by the press (and reporting from Macworld is something I've done myself) but it was followed up immediately by Bungie with more videos and more details on the Bungie.net site (also created in 1998). And of course, details had leaked before then (and other illicit videos too).
It was billed as a huge multiplayer battle zone, with seemless boundries of rolling terrain, with ground and air vehicles. The world even had natural wildlife in it, and even 4 years ago you could see the great vehicle handling and game physics in action. This bold focus was the attraction.
All that was canned and the game redesigned to fit the X-Box and focused to a single player game.
In a word, the game they were going to deliver was PlanetSide, which is what I do with a lot of my spare time.
(We've actually had discussions about this in #planetside on Quakenet. )
I've been saying this to people for ages (in my/. posts too).
The X-Box origional was visualy stunning and used the console very well (particularly given it was a launch title). It was obviously designed to take advantage of the specific strenghts (and limitations) of the console.
The PC port is a shoddy straight forward could-have-been-done-with-an-emulation-layer port of the X-Box version that althought (like the origional) it uses a few DX9 effects, take no consideration of the advantages of PC gaming hardware.
The FPS is piss poor, it's noteably wrose than the Doom 3 leak (and the exuses that it has it's own rendering engine being the reason for it being unable to support any FSAA just make it look all the more like a throw away port that Microsoft/Bungie didn't care about).
The PC net code is dire too, I have had less lag with X-Box Halo on the net (using a Linux gateway).
No wonder that Counter Strike : Condition Zero went from being in Gearbox's hands to getting done by Ritual. More fool Gearbox for taking this one on. I don't think it makes Bungie look good either.
The only real solid assumption one can make from what you did say is that you've read a review of the game or even possibly played it on PC or XBOX. Go back and reread what you said.
I think your expected to join the dots here for the logical bits...
FWIW, yes I've got the X-Box version, yes I've got the PC version, yes I've got an X-Box and a (decent, o/c'd 9700 Pro/1 GB DDR/SATA/AMD 2600+) PC to play them on and yes I've got a G4 if I feel the need to use it too.
I was looking forward to Halo at least 5 (possibly even 6) years ago.
Funny thing is, I don't think there'd have been a Halo 2 if it had been released on PC/Mac first. The companies who make games have to survive too.
I dont think that's true.
Apart from the fact that Halo had a cult following long before the X-Box was thought about [which was the entire reason Microsoft were attracted to Bungie in the first place]....
Bungie released their first '3D' game over 10 years ago now (full 16-bit color, 3D sound, Wolfenstien level of '3D' environment, but lanched the year before Wolfenstien).
I think they would be fine.
They had great sales too, with the Marathon and the hugely popular Myth: The Fallen Lords title.
Ironically, if it hadn't been for X-Box the game would probably look a LOT more like it did in the AMAZING initial real time trailers (before it had to be curtailed to work on the more limited X-Box).
Playing Halo in 1600x1200 is gorgeous, compared to the 640x480 (or whatever) that the XBox version was running in.
1600x1200? Not likely.
The frame rate is unplayable even on a GeForce 5900 or Radeon 9800 at that resolution, even GearBox have admitted publically on Usenet that you should stick to 1024x768 (and that Gearbox staff turn the shaders down for multiplayer).
They have said you should enjoy it because it's pretty and not expect to run it at high resolutions (so 1024x768 it is, and it's not possible to do FSAA with it because of the lame, non reworked rendering engine).
You can walk around fine if it's quiet (if you don't care to much for FPS and there isn't too much up close bump mapping going on) but you get in a firefight at 1600x1200 it's jerk city on the best card money can buy. It goes well below 20 FPS. People should check out the public time demo results if they have any doubts.
I'd love to see your time demo scores if you recon it's playable at 1600x1200! 1024x768 (in all it's non-FSAA'd dorkyness, yes, but that's it).
The graphics engine had to be completely reworked to be DirectX compatable.
That's BS! It already USED DirectX! That was one of the core selling points of the X-Box internally. The console would not exist if the games were NOT DirectX!
To be brutally honest, if your not even aware of that, you really don't know the first thing about the subject matter would to better to refrian from defending it.
It was not 'completely reworked' by any stretch of the imagination. It it had been, we could expect to see things like AF, FSAA support (and some of the damn effects like Night Vison and the Flashlight might work properly on ATI cards, as it is Night Vision is borked on lots of cards, and the Flashlight effect is usable but very inferior to the X-Box origional, and for a very lame reason that could have been fixed with a simple alpha transparent texture too! Arg!).
As for the multiplayer being laggy, it's laggy on a 2 MB ADSL. It's laggy for everyone, check the forums. Not all matches are laggy, but many are, even when they are low-ping with 5 or 6 players.
When all the players are quitting from servers and doing 'T: Laaaaag' from about half the servers I join you know SOMETHING is up. Q3A doesn't do that, CS doesn't do that, Halo PC does, even on Broadband and that's lousy. Networking was supposed to be a very big part of this game origionaly (though that's clearly been shelved now for HL2, or until an X-Box Live specific multiplayer version (which has been mentioned in offical press releases) gets released).
When Microsoft bought bungie, it should have become totally clear that a Mac version would never materialize.
You mean apart from that they kept saying it would (even after it was released for X-Box)?
Because it's the entire point. This is about Halo, he's pissed about not getting Halo, that's the point. It's okay for him to be pissed about that because they promised it would be out for his platform - and at the same time as the PC version - and they have been saying that same line for years.
Don't get me wrong, I see your point, I understand your frustration. In your place, I'd be mad too
If you read my post, you'd see I own a PC (and infer that I own an X-Box too). I don't even mention if I run Mac OS X at all.
(And as a matter of fact, I don't anymore, I only run Linux on my PowerBook).
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, I don't see how playing Halo against your family can replace simply talking to them on the phone
Well with all Xbox Live games you talk directly to the other players using the rather funky head set you get when you sign up (and the new inbuilt dashboard I gather, which I've not used [I'm not sure if it's been rolled out yet]).
It's actually cheaper to by an xbox do do this too it's just a shame there is not camera for the xbox as there is for the PS2 (at least there isn't as far as I'm aware).
If this were a site in Europe I would expect it to be written in a European language, use a European date format, and use "," as the decimal separator, not "." like in the US.
I would expect a web page to display a date that conforms to the ISO standard, as do the W3C. It's not the format commonly used in my country either, but I realise I'm publishing on a global medium to a global audience and that's why I use it.
Are you going to attack Asia now for not using a Western alphabet?
Most of Asia (including China, Japan, Korea and others) already use YYYY-MM-DD as their date format, so no I won't be critisising them as they have prefectly sensible date formats and, along with much of Scandinavia, are ahead of most the rest of the world when it comes to using logical date notation formats.
Attacking and riddiculing someone for not being "like you" (using your favorite date format, running your favorite operating system) is really quite a bit more arrogant than someone using their own culture
I'm not attacking a group for not being 'like me' I'm attacking them for doing what is clearly (as far as the rest of the world thinks) the wrong thing, and pointing out that MM/DD/YYYY is the wrong thing is something I am quite comfortable with.
Your simply ignoring the arguments of logic and common sense and attempting to introduce political correctness into the argument. You don't have to be a maths wizard or software developer to see why it's a bad format, but I really hope your not a programmer if you can't see what makes it a bad format.
The idea is that it's more logical and more useful is based on:
(a) The units are in order of significance (Days in Months in Years). It is very definately not arbitrary.
MM/DD/YYYY is however entirely arbirtary and much harder to organise or sort because of that.
While the ISO date standard of YYYY-MM-DD is certainly ultimately superior to either of the other two methods, you can still much more easily create an effetive sorting system based on DD/MM/YYYY than MM/DD/YYYY because there is some order (implied by the relative significance of the units) to the notation of DD/MM/YYYY.
This is in the same way that HH:MM:SS is the most appropriate way for us to read time (it features most to least significant, like the ISO date standard), but if I had to choose I'd rather have SS:MM:HH (least to most significant) than MM:SS:HH (which is entirely arbirtary and mirrors the middle-to-least-to-most significant format of MM/DD/YYYY)., Of course it's also the hardest to index as well as to manually prase, though of course you could 'get used to it' if you had to, and if you'd grown up with that it I'm sure it would seem entirely normal, but it still wouldn't be very sensible to an external observer.
By way of another, but practical example:
If you can imagine 3 stacks of say 100 cards each with a different date in the top right corner, one stack with dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format, another in the DD/MM/YYYY format and another in the MM/DD/YYYY format. Try thinking about sorting these and then imaging retreving items from the stack quickly based on the date. Alternatively, try knocking up a Perl/Python/etc script to do the same and see which is the most alkward format to deal with.
And:
(b) when reading from left to write your likely to want to know the day first (on the basis that your looking at something recent, or even current and want to know what day it is, or alternatively, on what specific day in the last few days something was done).
I still always use YYYY-MM-DD myself as it's just so much better (even if it does mess with the bank tellers who all seem to get confused by it and ask me what it is).
You want us to die because we use a different date format? Isn't that a bit absurd?
I expect it's not specifically related to the date format, but rather the quite astounding arrogance and destructive provincialism your demonstrating which is what's so objectionable.
But you'd have to clarify that with the poster.
Seriously YYYY-MM-DD is the only really agreed on format, and MM/DD/YYYY only gets the year out of place (its usually left off because it is normally obvious). DD/MM/YYYY, is just backwards; Nothing wrong with using it but I don't see the point in advocating it.
YYYY-MM-DD us not merely 'the only really agreed on format' it's the ISO 8601 International Standard format for date notation. It is the most useful format for direct digital manipulation and more than that, it's a practical and symbolic political compromise between the predominant format in North America, and the predominant format in the rest of the world.
DD/MM/YYYY is most useful for humans who use western left-to-right languages, this is why the western world (with the exception of North America) uses this format when writing dates.
MM/DD/YYYY is useless screwup of a system used by North Americans that is neither optimal for digital manipulation nor for parsing from left to right.
People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System. IME, they also tend not to be programmers (for reasons that should be obvious). It's demonstrably inferior to both systems (both for digital manipulation and for manual parsing) and this is why it restricted to common use only in North America. Like the Imperial System, it's an anachronism best left in the past where it belongs (though, also like the Imperial System, it appears that people will continue to use it for quite some time, no matter how obviously inferior it is to avalible alternatives).
I did read the article, and by which I mean actually read it, not skimmed it and inferred meaning into it. :P
That he showed it in a interview as 'an example of his practical ability' has no bearing on whether or not it was actually released (where possible, I show released and public examples of my software when in interviews).
The article simply says this about it:
His game, Crime Inc, which was developed between 1991 and 1993, involved gangs taking part in street crime.
It does not actually indicate if the game was released to the public. I'd like to know if it was, and if anyone has played it/seen it/knows of screen shots/reviews of it.
It remains to be seen whether is case has merit (like most readers I strongly suspect it does not) but it is a legitimate type of claim - I don't think it's like Carmack claming he had rights over all FPS's (which I think he very possibly could in the US, if he had a patent and pending no prior art). It's much more like Carmack claming rights over a 'game set in the future in which a space marine is sent to Mars and faces single handed armed combat with a large number of zombies and demons' (and the credibility of that claim would depend on exactly what ideas have been 'ripped off'). It's my understanding that the content of the game is the issue of debate (though I'd love to see more of Crime Inc, to know if their are other obvious similarities).
Somewhat iterestingly, I used to work in the building opposite DMA design in Dundee (and look out the window at them, less than 100 yards away), when I worked for SOL/Scottish Telecom. Dundee is a city with two Universities, and an economoy of low wages, mostly in the retail sector (due to complete collapse of industry in the area 1900's). As a result of being a small city, a good distance from any other similar sized cities, and having two Universities (yet with a low wage economy) it has no shortage of skilled workes who can be employed for far below market rates, and in the case of students and given the prestige of DMA, you only need to pay them very little indeed (you basically just need to feed them pizza).
I have heard many times from quite a few people that this is exactly what they did - employ interns as 'cheap/free labour'. This was not entirely a bad deal fo those employed, and they did so willingly, but if they are willing to take such gross advantage of students (who don't really know their own market worth, not only because they arnt in the market place, but because Dundee is not quite in touch with 'rest of the word') then it may set you thinking maybe they are willing to rip off someone interviewies idea.
Has anyone hear of or seen Crime Inc, the game this guy developed?
(or was it just some personal project that was never released publically?)
If you have the ability to make dummy robot soldiers that were useful for training, you may as well send them into battle (as long as you can afford to replace them when they inevitably get blown up in battle).
Until they are useful enough to be used in real battle soldiers are clearly better off training as they do now - against each other. Likely targets don't have robots of their own, and arnt likely to have any soon, so training against them is not going to be useful for troops.
It would be a easier to make remote controlled camera enabled battle robots than to make free thinking (or computer controlled) simulated battle trainer robots (and of course, the former of which actually we have and use now, as the US have used in Afghanista, they are just not anthropomorphised)
The bad news is it's not so much 50 USD every couple of years for a console Timmy already has, it's more like 250 USD every couple of years so Timmy can have the a new console and another 50 USD every couple of months so he can have the latest copy of EA Sports' latest-and-greatest NFL/NHL/NBA/Football title.
But I still agree with you, even at those prices it can be cheaper and certainly easier - so it's not hard to see why this happens, it's a huge undertaking to take your child to a sport and be involved, and much more so if you have two or three children.
How is "unravel" redundant?
When I think of "ravel", I think of the third definition listed on dictionary.com
3. To tangle or complicate.
To "unravel" makes perfect sense. To untangle.
That's a legitimate question and is a great example of how the language has evolved in an apparently illogical way that has resulted in something we now take for granted as being logical.
Origionally, when it began use in the English language ravel actually meant what unravel means today (more or less). It meant a loose thread. Common usage of the 'un' prefix in other words lead people to add the prefix to the word because it was more intuative that way, even though the 'un' was entirely redundant.
There was no legitimate reason for sticking 'un' in front of 'ravel' because they ment the same, but people did, and it stuck.
Over time 'ravel' (without the 'un' prefix) has come to mean the opposite of unravel, because people have thought it's more intuative that way.
Of course you could argue that they could just have left the damn world alone in the first place, but they didn't because there were adapting the language to make it more intuative, and thus simpler.
I'm very comfortable with this evolution of language, Amercian English (for example) has many words in it that have very different meanings (or in some cases, simply do not exist at all) in other forms of English, like British English. But some people always try to get in the way of evolution (which is rather irratating and pointless, but they do it anyway as luddites have done through the ages).
That's not to say that you can't or should not speak out against certain changes in our language, but if it get's to the stage where it's under discussion, it's going to happen anyway and it's just a cause of adapting to the 'moving of the cheese'.
When society decides to change the rules (as it did with the usage of unravel (just to stay with that example)) it's just a case of looking at the new change and trying to understand the reasons behind that change, because you can't hope to stop new words like this gaining momentum and you just have to decide whether to roll with them or instead die an angry old man.
Some people cope badly with these changes because they cope badly with change generally (they are not good at having others 'move their cheese').
The word gets little or no use outside of the United States (so in British English, or International English I'd say it's use was incorrect, though obviously the intended meaning is still clear) but it's been used in the US since the begining of the last century and I'd say that it's in almost every single current American English dictionary you can find is pretty good evidence that critics are really achieving nothing by harrasing others for using it.
(They are also being hypocrites because there are plenty of newer words that are less legitimate but that they use quite happily, but then grammer nazi's are often like that. )
I do love they way you managed to completely contradict your own arguments in your own defense, what a novel form of argument!
Did you really write that all yourself, or did you bribe an 8 year old to do it for you?
Just kidding, I'm sure you wrote that yourself, it displays all of your usual vitriol (worthy of any 13 year old).
I'm loathed to think your a graduate of the American education system - I'd hate to think that your countries education system was so far down the toilet that resorting to repeating the phrase 'who cares!' incessantly makes for some kind of legitimate defense of your hostile and ill founded beliefs. It's like something out of a scripted episode of Jerry Springer *imagines user clicking their fingers and making odd neck twitching movements while arguing*...
Looking at your history of posts, you display quite a bit of tedious grammer nazi behavior, and a lot of generic 'angry (and rather ignorant) young male' behavior. I suggest you curtail that behavior, try and get an education and come back to us all when your a more worthy member of the human race (and less pointlessly hostile). You could do with a wider perspective too.
If you must rant, at least find a subject your even remotely understand before you go off half-cocked reciting populist aguments about which you understand little. Americans often have trouble in dealing with the English langauge though, so I can't say I'm surprised are your lack of distinction between American English and English generally.
It's been used in the United States for nearly 80 years. It's been in use a lot longer than most words we use every day. It's also present in many American dictionaries. American English, International English and British English are not the same language any more than Scots is the same as English.
Further more, language evolves; some people are simply too short sighted to comprehend that the purpose of language is to allow communication. The use of 'irregardless' vrs. 'regardless' does not impede that purpose. You'd have to be particularly dull-witted not be able to infer the meaning even if you had never heard the former before.
This evolution in the language has some about because it's intuitive and logical for many users (given the use of irrespective and regardless) and that's exactly how the English language (the International, British and American variants) has evolved into what it is today. We have gained many words in precisely this manner.
There are many other words in the English language which also use redundant prefixes, even simple words such as 'unravel'. One would assume from the beatings of people like yourself that it should not be considered a word and that we should exclusively only use the original 'ravel' instead; the 'un-' prefix being mysteriously so objectionable to linguistic conservatives like yourself, no matter how much more intuitive it seems.
Recording in the cinema (or intent to record, because that's intent to commit a crime) is of course already illegal.
:)
This law is pointless because it offers no new protection at all (and I think those behind the film production have a legitimate right to production, making movies is a risky and costly business, video stores are littered with expensive and costly failers - high celebity actors demand phenominal fees). This just isn't a legitimate or even meaningful way of try to protect them. Pointless laws like this get passed all the time and it's a waste of tax payers money. Our money. Your money.
In 5-10 years when every standard phone has a high res digital camera it's going to look even more rediculous than it is now but those responsible for it conveniantly won't be around to blame.
My phone [a Motorola A920] already records video in MPEG4 and, it being a 3G, I already watch things like the news headlines on it, which it streams over it's 3G connection, I'd be just as happy to watch a movie of the same quality, I know I've certainly watched videos of worse quality on occation).
Sadly, we have laws just like this that were passed in the 80's and 90's that related to recent or preceived problems at the time (e.g. with video games), but that are already out of date and worth less after just 10 years and they were pointless because they were already covered by existing legislation. These are laws that should not ever be implimented in the first place, as not only are they costly to impliment they have a nasty habbit of getting in the way and biting us in the ass later because they can be applied in unexpected ways (because they wern't thought through properly in the first instance).
It's clearly it's a waste of time because you have to logically include phones and PDA's (like Sony's Clie Series) as well and can can't ban phones from the cinema because people just won't go to the cinema.
The lack of understanding of real, modern issues in high public offer is something I find very disturbing. The UK has an equally bad track record and it's due simply to a lack of understanding and distinct lack of vision from a generation that arn't able to grasp technology and it's implications for politics and society (and thats as it stands at the moment, never mind them trying to fathom how it might impact our lives in the future).
Roll on Spider Jerusalem video shades!
That will fuck with them!
Thank you for proving my point. Translating into US$, that's 42GB/month for about $45 a month -- $1 per GB.
No that doesn't prove your point - it only serves to show how little you know or seem to be able to understand - that INCLUDES 40GB of space (rather than costing, as you said, '1/month/100MB of space') and of course the physical the dedicated server itself (which you get to keep).
According to your suggested pricing the whole lot would cost in the region of 450 USD per month, not 45 USD.
Oh, look mummy a muppet! Can I take him home and keep him (in the basement, where I can torture him)?
Harsh, but fair! - As we will see...
So, how do you propose to pay for web hosting and bandwidth?
I use money, what do you use? Big gold bars by the sounds of it (going by how much you seem to willing to pay for simple, cheap, easy to provide services)...
A good webhosting provider will run $1/month/100MB of space, and $1-$2/GB of transfer. If they're charging less, don't expect any sort of reliability.
No only do I, for example, get my 2 MB ADSL for 70 UKP Month, I get 250MB Webspace with it too, with full CGI (Perl, PHP) & SSH (+ other value ads) and it's very reliable. Hell, they arn't even the cheapest either, I'm just too slack to move!
I get 250 MB of webspace, with no pre-determined limit (it's based on a case by case basis, if you don't take the piss, they don't take any notice, which is how most places work, because they can't be bothered with hard or soft limits, it just doesn't pay financially to do it, most service providers just check for gross offenders).
So I get my solid ADSL for a reasonable price (quite cheap by UK standards for 2 MB [unquota'd]) and I get effectively free web hosting thrown in.
Good greif, you can get a DEDICATED SERVER with over 42 GB of transfer per month (which you can spread over a year to average it out) FOR LESS THAT 30 UKP A MONTH! [and extra transfer is 1 UKP per GB].
I spend more than that going to the pub in weekday evening! It's hardly breaking the bank is it?
If, by some good fortune, your website does more than say 50 GB of traffic a month and your not able to think of other ways than just advertising to make revenue, then it would best for all concerned if you just kept off the internet and left us alone to have grown up conversations.
People would use the internet if there was no on-line advertisement sponsored content on it at all. To attempt to argue that it's some kind of economic requirement for the world web web to function is to be argumentative and feeble minded.
This is a bit of an over-simplification. The abstraction layer must fill in all the gaps of missing functionality in the less-powerful database backend(s). Most likely they are taking advantage of some of Oracle's advanced features, which would essentially need to be re-implemented. Not an easy task. If it's a cheesy web site, then sure, use ADOdb or something. That works because you're using minimal SQL that everybody supports.
:), but all I'm really getting at was that it did a lot of things that are (as I seem to have proved ;) quite complicated to explain, but in a way that was trivial to use as a user and to use the functions in the front end, because the libraries and the backend processes were done well.
/. before :) was simply deliberate and considered planning of development beforehand. I feel as long as you plan ahead and have a solid foundation, your able to cope with the curveballs you'll inevitably get thrown (and not have to re-dig your foundations later).
I think there is some fair comment in that - but I do think that even if you do have to fill the gaps in to kludge for a lack of, say, nested transactions, it doesn't have to be an immense amount of work. You only need to cover for the specific functionality your application actually needs.
For example, if you wanted to take advantage of nested transactions, it's not particularly hard to write the functionality required into an existing function which wraps the request (and insert/roll back data (i.e. re-insert previous values, temporarily held in memory) as required). Writing a wrapper like that for specific types of actions really isn't that difficult or time consuming to do (unless the program is a nasty hash to begin with).
I worked on a project with transactions that had complicated inter-dependencies, multiple conditions for failure, and the ability to handle partial failure by committing and reporting failures - as well as refund all the costs involved in a transaction in the event of a single frailer condition [the action was dependant on the failure condition] (and all the while locking the funds and 'pre-paid tokens' as needed from each department budget involved and only refunding them if warranted - so the entire operation could ultimately be considered atomic by the client).
The instance I'm thinking of had multi-tired levels of funding to clear, with multiple shared pools to pull both funds and 'pre-paid tokens' from (in some cases one, both, neither or either were required for a successful transaction - with the availability of both being determined based on the contents of shared pools in an inter-dependent hierarchy which allowed for flexible budgets and pre-paid token reserves by allowing resources to be shared between departments, virtual groups and the company as a whole - as desired (or not) by the various administrators at each level of the organisation, rules which were all subject to change dynamically by them), so it's fair to say it was reasonably non trivial.
I realise that might not make a lot of sense (might make more sense if you re-read it a few times
It's completely backend independent and all you'd need to do to change the format it uses was change a single library file to match your DB. It could use SQL, BDB, or CSV or XML file for data storeage and not care about the data input/output, but you'd still be able to take advantage of advanced features of a better backend because of the carefully chosen core functions (and getting them right was absolutely vital). Tedious and deliberate planning (and ensuring you get the time to do it) was all that's really required to achieve this. I spent months planning, long before I started coding any of this.
The key (as I'll admit to having banged on about on
Actually, abstraction from the database is exactly the issue.
Having done commercial code using the same practices and having used it to convert my own GPL project (from storing nested and dependant data as XML to SQL of all things) at Savannah to I can testify to this. It's easy if you actually design your software (not just sit down and bash the keys randomly like a code monkey), it just requires planning and a commitment to professional practice, specifically a commitment to good design, which should be considered professional integrity.
It's trivial to change one function to behave in a completely alternate matter and give the same output. Sometimes you do need to change a handful of places to accomodate a change in design, no matter how forward thinking you've tried to be, but if significant parts of the program need to be re-written to cope then it hasn't used abstraction at all.
If you don't get that - then I'd say you don't really get the point of abstracting at all. The idea is not to mimic the functions of the DB you are calling in some redundant fashion, it's to allow them to obtain the data from any DB, even a CSV file if you wish, without the rest of the program even being aware you've switched formats.
Nuts to this! Seriously! Why should we contribute to this?
It makes sense for them to do this port. They should have made it work on at least either Postgres/MySQL in the first place. It's their own fault, they have clearly dug their own hole and now they want us to give them money to buy a ladder to help them out of it.
If the program was coded well, it wouldn't be more than a few days work (they should just need to change a very small number of functions, the ones that act as an abstraction layer to the DB). If they haven't, that's their problem and they have a lot more than just backend portability to worry about.
In even reasonably complex projects I always use an abstraction layer so I have the option to change the DB at will. In fact, you might say I use two layers - one layer for the DB, and another layer in the form of the functions I call to get data (which call the DB layer), and I usually have a set of 'core' functions which are not called directly from any user facing elements but only from libraries which do the actual data retrieval.
I'd also add it acts as an excellent way of reducing the number of bugs - by forcing the use of abstracted interfaces I find the enforced simplicity of the interfaces cuts down on the bug rate (by breaking down the code in to easily maintainable and re-useable chunks with easy to test input and output).
So in this case I say:
Lack of abstraction == no cookie for you! Bad developer!
This is no different from scanning an the invoice and blotting out the dollar amounts and account information then posting it on the web. Doing that will get you fired almost anywhere.
Apart from that he didn't do that - he didn't post internal confidential company documents he took a picture of the back of a delivery truck showing Apple products ariving at Microsoft. Well we already know they buy Apple products. How on earth do you imagine they write all that Mac software?
The company I work for use Cisco routers and Sun servers! Oh no, will I get fired now? Oh that's right, of course I won't because your talking crap.
As it's already public knowledge that Microsoft use Apple products in house, there is no case for a breech of trust argument.
The image and comments on the blog were entirely innocuous and this situation was handled incompotently.
If you don't think firing someone over something to trumped up and innocuous falls in to the category of wrong and entirely inappropriate then you have a severly broken sense of what's right and what's wrong and would do well to consult a shrink (in case your a latent sociopath).
If I posted pictures of my companies semi-secret lab on the internet for all to see I would think I'd get fired too
The picture is the point - It's not a secret lab, it's one entirely innocuous picture of the back of truck.
It's in no way comparable with someone posting multiple pictures of a 'semi-secret lab'.
It's well known that of course Microsoft has PowerPC systems (how else would they write all the Mac OS software they do?). So the secrecy on that topic isn't an issue.
Somehow I can't see this head line: 'Burger King worker takes a picture of a McDonalds Milkshake in a Burger King car park, post it on his homepage, gets fired.'.
It's so objectionable because its just trivial nonsense over a non-event.
He didn't in any way portray his employees in a bad light and their is no breach of security here. He stated MSCopy building is near the Goods Delivery building (something that someone in Security objected to, according to the blog) but that blissfully ignores the fact that the buildings are going to be clearly sign posted in particular the Goods Delivery Area (and it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out).
There are no legitimate concerns here that warrant firing an employee, just a trumped up power tripper in Security/HR/middle management with nothing better to do than callously harm in the lives of others - all they have succeeded in doing is making the world just a little gloomier.
I can't think the mother of the person responsible for firing this hapless employee would be proud of their offspring's achievements that day - and the same goes for those involved who stood by and let it happen. I think the middle manager who stood for this and failed to stand up for his (even temporary) employee is spineless wonder and ought to be ashamed of themselves. We are always telling our children to stand up against decisions we think are wrong and unjust, it's sad that we as adults seldom practice what we preach.
Like many things in life, it happens because other people are afraid to stick their necks out and say 'No, wait a minute, that's not fair.' and put their foot down.
What's happend to this employee is clearly not right, and you shouldn't need your mother (or another Slashdot poster) to show you that.
Yeah, it is true.
No it's not, as the facts clearly bear out.
I remember a guy getting a $30,000 bill from Earthlink because he hosted a vid of Halo before they announced the planetside stuff you're talking about.
And you suggesting that proves your theory how, exactly?
The game play was origionaly designed, before they had done the engine. That's public knowledge. That was in around 1996. Something more akin to their origional vision for the project was eventualy released in the form of Myth : The Fallen Lords, in 1997.
Meanwhile, the origional project they were developing was taken in a very new direction, and HALO was born. This was during that period (though it continued to evolve).
The intial video was not released until after all this (2 years after), during a Macworld Keynote speech. Reports of the gameplay were already being discussed by Bungie and being reported back from Macworld.
The initial public video was not released until that keynote in mid 1999. You can find the following on Bungie.com's website (note this is actually dated a few months later, but that's the best The Way Back machine has - it has not archived halo.bungie.com/.net):
Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void, you must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air. The epic single-player game is complemented by a role-based, cooperative multiplayer team game. Three players might take the roles of driver, shotgun and rear gunner of a light, fast all-terrain vehicle, roaring and bouncing over uneven ground toward the enemy fortress, ducking under a hail of fire from alien aircraft screaming overhead.
Not only was this sort of info reported at Macworld by the press (and reporting from Macworld is something I've done myself) but it was followed up immediately by Bungie with more videos and more details on the Bungie.net site (also created in 1998). And of course, details had leaked before then (and other illicit videos too).
Not true.
It was billed as a huge multiplayer battle zone, with seemless boundries of rolling terrain, with ground and air vehicles. The world even had natural wildlife in it, and even 4 years ago you could see the great vehicle handling and game physics in action. This bold focus was the attraction.
All that was canned and the game redesigned to fit the X-Box and focused to a single player game.
In a word, the game they were going to deliver was PlanetSide, which is what I do with a lot of my spare time.
(We've actually had discussions about this in #planetside on Quakenet. )
I've been saying this to people for ages (in my /. posts too).
The X-Box origional was visualy stunning and used the console very well (particularly given it was a launch title). It was obviously designed to take advantage of the specific strenghts (and limitations) of the console.
The PC port is a shoddy straight forward could-have-been-done-with-an-emulation-layer port of the X-Box version that althought (like the origional) it uses a few DX9 effects, take no consideration of the advantages of PC gaming hardware.
The FPS is piss poor, it's noteably wrose than the Doom 3 leak (and the exuses that it has it's own rendering engine being the reason for it being unable to support any FSAA just make it look all the more like a throw away port that Microsoft/Bungie didn't care about).
The PC net code is dire too, I have had less lag with X-Box Halo on the net (using a Linux gateway).
No wonder that Counter Strike : Condition Zero went from being in Gearbox's hands to getting done by Ritual. More fool Gearbox for taking this one on. I don't think it makes Bungie look good either.
The only real solid assumption one can make from what you did say is that you've read a review of the game or even possibly played it on PC or XBOX. Go back and reread what you said.
I think your expected to join the dots here for the logical bits...
FWIW, yes I've got the X-Box version, yes I've got the PC version, yes I've got an X-Box and a (decent, o/c'd 9700 Pro/1 GB DDR/SATA/AMD 2600+) PC to play them on and yes I've got a G4 if I feel the need to use it too.
I was looking forward to Halo at least 5 (possibly even 6) years ago.
Funny thing is, I don't think there'd have been a Halo 2 if it had been released on PC/Mac first. The companies who make games have to survive too.
I dont think that's true.
Apart from the fact that Halo had a cult following long before the X-Box was thought about [which was the entire reason Microsoft were attracted to Bungie in the first place]....
Bungie released their first '3D' game over 10 years ago now (full 16-bit color, 3D sound, Wolfenstien level of '3D' environment, but lanched the year before Wolfenstien).
I think they would be fine.
They had great sales too, with the Marathon and the hugely popular Myth: The Fallen Lords title.
Ironically, if it hadn't been for X-Box the game would probably look a LOT more like it did in the AMAZING initial real time trailers (before it had to be curtailed to work on the more limited X-Box).
Playing Halo in 1600x1200 is gorgeous, compared to the 640x480 (or whatever) that the XBox version was running in.
1600x1200? Not likely.
The frame rate is unplayable even on a GeForce 5900 or Radeon 9800 at that resolution, even GearBox have admitted publically on Usenet that you should stick to 1024x768 (and that Gearbox staff turn the shaders down for multiplayer).
They have said you should enjoy it because it's pretty and not expect to run it at high resolutions (so 1024x768 it is, and it's not possible to do FSAA with it because of the lame, non reworked rendering engine).
You can walk around fine if it's quiet (if you don't care to much for FPS and there isn't too much up close bump mapping going on) but you get in a firefight at 1600x1200 it's jerk city on the best card money can buy. It goes well below 20 FPS. People should check out the public time demo results if they have any doubts.
I'd love to see your time demo scores if you recon it's playable at 1600x1200! 1024x768 (in all it's non-FSAA'd dorkyness, yes, but that's it).
The graphics engine had to be completely reworked to be DirectX compatable.
That's BS! It already USED DirectX! That was one of the core selling points of the X-Box internally. The console would not exist if the games were NOT DirectX!
To be brutally honest, if your not even aware of that, you really don't know the first thing about the subject matter would to better to refrian from defending it.
It was not 'completely reworked' by any stretch of the imagination. It it had been, we could expect to see things like AF, FSAA support (and some of the damn effects like Night Vison and the Flashlight might work properly on ATI cards, as it is Night Vision is borked on lots of cards, and the Flashlight effect is usable but very inferior to the X-Box origional, and for a very lame reason that could have been fixed with a simple alpha transparent texture too! Arg!).
As for the multiplayer being laggy, it's laggy on a 2 MB ADSL. It's laggy for everyone, check the forums. Not all matches are laggy, but many are, even when they are low-ping with 5 or 6 players.
When all the players are quitting from servers and doing 'T: Laaaaag' from about half the servers I join you know SOMETHING is up. Q3A doesn't do that, CS doesn't do that, Halo PC does, even on Broadband and that's lousy. Networking was supposed to be a very big part of this game origionaly (though that's clearly been shelved now for HL2, or until an X-Box Live specific multiplayer version (which has been mentioned in offical press releases) gets released).
When Microsoft bought bungie, it should have become totally clear that a Mac version would never materialize.
You mean apart from that they kept saying it would (even after it was released for X-Box)?
What's that have to do with my argument?
Because it's the entire point. This is about Halo, he's pissed about not getting Halo, that's the point. It's okay for him to be pissed about that because they promised it would be out for his platform - and at the same time as the PC version - and they have been saying that same line for years.
Don't get me wrong, I see your point, I understand your frustration. In your place, I'd be mad too
If you read my post, you'd see I own a PC (and infer that I own an X-Box too). I don't even mention if I run Mac OS X at all.
(And as a matter of fact, I don't anymore, I only run Linux on my PowerBook).
But what's what got to do with anything?