8 web servers, actually, to give us ample room to grow. And the Firefox rendering bug is unfortunate. We tried to code around it, but I believe it broke a few other things in IE and Safari that we didn't want to break instead(if I remember correctly).
Although I doubt you'll believe me since this is Slashdot, there is nothing nefarious going on with regards to browser support. We code (and test) to make sure IE, Firefox, and Safari can see our stuff. It is a primary design goal of the site - we still have a lot of Mac browsers hitting our site due to our studio's history. There are rendering bugs here and there, but that's mostly a limitation of manpower that slows those fixes up.
Yeah, sorry about that. There's a caching bug with the RSS feeds which is why we haven't publized the feature much. A fix should be going out late this week or early next week, depending on a few other things.
Part of it certainly has to do with getting quality Japanese developers. Sega, Square, Namco, Konami, Capcom, etc. aren't going to be making any games for your console if it isn't being made in their home market. If the Xbox were more successful in the Japanese market, it would probably have more Japanese games.
Then again, it is a chicken and the egg problem. To get more successful in the Japanese market, you need games that appeal to the Japanese gamers, and the people who do that the best are the developers in Japan.
No, you're not correct. As I said before, you're making stuff up based upon incomplete information. There were builds before MacWorld 1999's public debut. And Bungie had started doing cross-platform development before that with the Myth series.
And maybe, just maybe, a person employed by Bungie might know what he's talking about.
That's not true. It was originally a title for Macs and PCs (a cross-platform title). You simply think that it was originally for Macs because that's the platform it was publically shown off for first. Or did you forget that it is possible to write cross-platform code?
Don't you love it when people make up facts to suit their worldview?
You have to be careful with your definitions, though; there are multiple ways of being playable. For example, Doom 3 (last year) was being demoed live. It wasn't a video. This year, it was a video. Half-Life 2 and Halo 2 were both demoed live (as in being played).
Now, they weren't playable in the way that you want, where the attendees can play it. But often that's not the best way to demonstrate things in a game when it is early, or if you want to keep certain things secret, or if you have rough edges you want to hide.
The point, though, is the interaction is there - they aren't video, not pre-rendered cut scenes, but actual gameplay. That's enough, I think. And all of the games meet that criteria. I don't see why they can't be deserving of a "Game of the Show" type award.
What they did was put the IIS metabase (which used to be a binary file) into an XML file. It is all very slick...
IIS 6 really is a big deal for Windows... IIS 5 is a steaming pile of crap compared to Apache, but IIS 6 seems really promising. I'll hold out my opinion until I actually use it though... but it can't get much worse than IIS 5.
Actually, the XBox CAN output all the way up to 1080i, and gets 480p for essentially free. And you don't need an HDTV tuner to see it, you just need a TV with display and input support. The Sony XBRs are sufficient. I know a lot of people that have those.
The real problem the Xbox has is memory - since it has only 64 megs of unified memory, it generally does not have enough to go any more than 480p without the rest of the game suffering (in most games, anyway). I imagine in the next round of consoles, they'll have enough memory to push the display. The graphics power is already there.
The problem with this is that you don't actually buy software, you buy the license and (sometimes) the media that contains the software. If you actually bought the software, you'd be in control of how it is used. You could freely give it away, etc.
Now, one can bitch about the notion of licenses being restrictive and having hidden clauses in them, or only using free software. But the DMCA is not bad because it restricts your use of your "bought" software. You didn't buy it. The DMCA sucks because of the free reign it gives to copyright holders over licensing and fair use.
Software is already a service, just an unlimited use service. Now, with the Internet and the DMCA, it is a lot easier for companies to make you pay renewal fees.
There is a limit to the news headlines on our web system for formatting reasons. So, the author put it in brief terms. The intent was to announce that the source code to the Myth 2 metaserver was available, i.e., the source that was closed is now open.
At any rate, most people outside of the Open Source community don't seem to associate the same meaning that slashdot users usually do to the phrase. And I don't think it is misleading, since the news article specifically directs you to the license to get the exact terms of the source. It isn't like it is some big consipiracy to hide the terms of the license.
Just some info from someone who actually works for Bungie...
- The Myth games are actually owned by Take 2 Interactive... Take 2 got Myth and Oni because then owned 20% of Bungie at the time of the buyout. Bungie's Online team runs the bungie.net metaserver still, though. The point, though, is that Bungie/MS makes no money off of Myth sales... that would all go to Take 2 Interactive.
- The license for the code is rather simplistic, basically just saying you can't use it commercially, and keeping copyright notices, etc. Other than that, I'm pretty sure it is fair game. Some of you here will no doubt point out it isn't "Open Source" in the truest sense. However, one of the primary goals of the license is allowing people to improve the code while not forcing sharing of such changes. One of the big reasons for this is because if you try to put a ranking system in there, it is desirable in most cases to hide the specifics of that system so that users can't stack the deck to artifically inflate their rankings. There are other issues of course, but that is one that I remember being brought up. The point is that a license forcing sharing of every change is not appropriate for this software.
- As for the "no commerical purposes" clause, well, let me just say this: bungie.net was always offered for free. Every copy of Myth 2 got you a bungie.net account. To me, it seems wrong to allow people to use something that was offered for free by us and now charge for it.
Well, I guess if any of you are Myth 2 players, or are just curious, I recommend checking out bungie.net's Myth Vault. Ask questions on the forum, or post them in our FUQ (frequently unanswered questions) database.
-Tom
Bungie.net System Overlord
Re:Christianity is at its worst... and its best
on
Handling the Loads
·
· Score: 1
I am Catholic myself, and I'd have to agree with you here. I hate it when people try and evangelize. I'll answer questions to those who are curious and want to know more, but faith in something greater than yourself must be an individual choice. If you are simply following something a parent or a charismatic leader feeds you, you don't really have true faith. I go to church now because of a choice of something I believe in, not because I've done it before.
And, just to make a side point about people like Falwell and Robertson, and their ilk, since they do more to harm the "right" then help it:
What many people must realize (especially when they look at the "leaders" of their own religion) is that organized religion is fundamentally a human construction. The issue of the faith is much more personal, between God (or whatever you call Him/Her) and yourself. The construct exists in most cases to assist individuals in keeping their faith within the secular world. At least, that usually is the original intent when it is created. But like any human construct, they are subject to the same imperfections as human beings: we can be very selfish, violent, greedy, sexist, racist, etc. This leads to the corruption we see in greedy televangelists, the evils of extremists such as those who murder doctors to protect unborn children, the religious wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, and those responsible for Tuesday. Remember however, that these religions can also produce ultimate charity: witness the work of many religious charities to help the poor. Organized religion can be a lot like a gun: source of strength that can be used for commiting evil act, as well as defending the innocent against evil itself.
Finally, U.S. citizens might do well to remember something quoted from a person whom I wish I could remember their name:
"... This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
Sure, you could find instructions for building a nuclear device on the Net. Then again, do you think you can find technical schematics for all kinds of US, Russian, and other misc. countries' nuclear weapons? Bear in mind that the two hard drives that are gone are designed to be plugged into a laptop in the field for use by our rapid response team in the event of a nuclear emergency. This is the precise engineering details of several different types of weapons, enough for arming, disarming, and probably even some duplication.
** The Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days. That's religion. That has no place in a biology classroom. **
Ah, but you make an assumption there. You assume a day means 24 hours as we define it by the definition of the second. That is a rather odd thing to say, given that the definition of a day couldn't possibly exist until the Earth was created to give the effect of day and night. The Earth wasn't "created" until the 3 or 4th day. So, a "day" could be the millions of years necessary to form the solar system... etc.
I agree that such discussions should be taking place, but in Kansas, they decided to remove the testing of the macro evolution theory from the biology curriculm. As someone earlier in this thread pointed out, evolution is hard to test as a high school student can't exactly experiment with it within the confines of a classroom semester. They were being lazy, and the media called them on it. It is that simple.
At any rate, you missed the point of the story if you think the Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days. The story is meant to teach even the most uneducated person that God created everything, he didn't do it instantly (it took time), and in the end, for better or for worse, he saw that it was good. Don't listen to the crap the fundamentalist Christians put out.
In the end, each person must come to know the truth themselves, and cannot have it spoon fed to them without question. You were given the capacity to know the truth and the free will to act upon it. Not doing so is a waste of material.
Okay, first of all, some people are really blowing this out of proportion. They just decided not to put it on the standardized state tests, not ban it.
Second, regarding the religion vs. science problem these people have, I really don't understand why there is a problem. Science deals with the physical world. It attempts to determine the nature of our universe through observation and experimentation. It is constantly updating the world view as new observations and data become available.
Religion, on the other hand, attempts to explain with the more philosophical and non-empirical issues. Things such as the purpose of creation, the who and why of it, how it is going to end, and what does it all mean. Religion shouldn't describe how things happen that science can explain, except in instances when what happened are above our current level of understanding.
Take for example the big bang theory of the creation of this universe. Some idiot fundamentalist Christians would have you believe that everything was created in 6 days, simply because the Bible said so. They need to be reminded of the context of the Genesis story. That story was passed down by voice, not by writing for several thousand years before it was written down, and has since been translated, retold, and translated again for several more thousand years. Also, they forget that this story was initially intended for simple farmers and hunters, not scientists. The Genesis story was meant to inform the reader that God created everything from nothing, and did it over a period of time, and that what he created was good. HOW he did that is not an issue. Whether he made homo sapiens by evolving us or whatever else doesn't matter to teach the religion of the matter.
As you can see, these are not opposing philosophies. They just are attempting to answer different questions. Science wants to know what is going on, and how it happens. Religion wants to know who did it and why. The problem occurs when they go out of their realm of expertise. Then everything essentially goes to hell.
Slashdot Mirror
8 web servers, actually, to give us ample room to grow. And the Firefox rendering bug is unfortunate. We tried to code around it, but I believe it broke a few other things in IE and Safari that we didn't want to break instead(if I remember correctly).
Although I doubt you'll believe me since this is Slashdot, there is nothing nefarious going on with regards to browser support. We code (and test) to make sure IE, Firefox, and Safari can see our stuff. It is a primary design goal of the site - we still have a lot of Mac browsers hitting our site due to our studio's history. There are rendering bugs here and there, but that's mostly a limitation of manpower that slows those fixes up.
-Tom, Web dev engineer, bungie.net
Yeah, sorry about that. There's a caching bug with the RSS feeds which is why we haven't publized the feature much. A fix should be going out late this week or early next week, depending on a few other things.
Part of it certainly has to do with getting quality Japanese developers. Sega, Square, Namco, Konami, Capcom, etc. aren't going to be making any games for your console if it isn't being made in their home market. If the Xbox were more successful in the Japanese market, it would probably have more Japanese games.
Then again, it is a chicken and the egg problem. To get more successful in the Japanese market, you need games that appeal to the Japanese gamers, and the people who do that the best are the developers in Japan.
No, you're not correct. As I said before, you're making stuff up based upon incomplete information. There were builds before MacWorld 1999's public debut. And Bungie had started doing cross-platform development before that with the Myth series.
And maybe, just maybe, a person employed by Bungie might know what he's talking about.
That's not true. It was originally a title for Macs and PCs (a cross-platform title). You simply think that it was originally for Macs because that's the platform it was publically shown off for first. Or did you forget that it is possible to write cross-platform code?
Don't you love it when people make up facts to suit their worldview?
-Tom
You have to be careful with your definitions, though; there are multiple ways of being playable. For example, Doom 3 (last year) was being demoed live. It wasn't a video. This year, it was a video. Half-Life 2 and Halo 2 were both demoed live (as in being played).
Now, they weren't playable in the way that you want, where the attendees can play it. But often that's not the best way to demonstrate things in a game when it is early, or if you want to keep certain things secret, or if you have rough edges you want to hide.
The point, though, is the interaction is there - they aren't video, not pre-rendered cut scenes, but actual gameplay. That's enough, I think. And all of the games meet that criteria. I don't see why they can't be deserving of a "Game of the Show" type award.
What they did was put the IIS metabase (which used to be a binary file) into an XML file. It is all very slick...
IIS 6 really is a big deal for Windows... IIS 5 is a steaming pile of crap compared to Apache, but IIS 6 seems really promising. I'll hold out my opinion until I actually use it though... but it can't get much worse than IIS 5.
Actually, the XBox CAN output all the way up to 1080i, and gets 480p for essentially free. And you don't need an HDTV tuner to see it, you just need a TV with display and input support. The Sony XBRs are sufficient. I know a lot of people that have those.
The real problem the Xbox has is memory - since it has only 64 megs of unified memory, it generally does not have enough to go any more than 480p without the rest of the game suffering (in most games, anyway). I imagine in the next round of consoles, they'll have enough memory to push the display. The graphics power is already there.
The problem with this is that you don't actually buy software, you buy the license and (sometimes) the media that contains the software. If you actually bought the software, you'd be in control of how it is used. You could freely give it away, etc.
Now, one can bitch about the notion of licenses being restrictive and having hidden clauses in them, or only using free software. But the DMCA is not bad because it restricts your use of your "bought" software. You didn't buy it. The DMCA sucks because of the free reign it gives to copyright holders over licensing and fair use.
Software is already a service, just an unlimited use service. Now, with the Internet and the DMCA, it is a lot easier for companies to make you pay renewal fees.
On the choice of headline:
There is a limit to the news headlines on our web system for formatting reasons. So, the author put it in brief terms. The intent was to announce that the source code to the Myth 2 metaserver was available, i.e., the source that was closed is now open.
At any rate, most people outside of the Open Source community don't seem to associate the same meaning that slashdot users usually do to the phrase. And I don't think it is misleading, since the news article specifically directs you to the license to get the exact terms of the source. It isn't like it is some big consipiracy to hide the terms of the license.
-Tom
Bungie.net System Overlord
Just some info from someone who actually works for Bungie...
- The Myth games are actually owned by Take 2 Interactive... Take 2 got Myth and Oni because then owned 20% of Bungie at the time of the buyout. Bungie's Online team runs the bungie.net metaserver still, though. The point, though, is that Bungie/MS makes no money off of Myth sales... that would all go to Take 2 Interactive.
- The license for the code is rather simplistic, basically just saying you can't use it commercially, and keeping copyright notices, etc. Other than that, I'm pretty sure it is fair game. Some of you here will no doubt point out it isn't "Open Source" in the truest sense. However, one of the primary goals of the license is allowing people to improve the code while not forcing sharing of such changes. One of the big reasons for this is because if you try to put a ranking system in there, it is desirable in most cases to hide the specifics of that system so that users can't stack the deck to artifically inflate their rankings. There are other issues of course, but that is one that I remember being brought up. The point is that a license forcing sharing of every change is not appropriate for this software.
- As for the "no commerical purposes" clause, well, let me just say this: bungie.net was always offered for free. Every copy of Myth 2 got you a bungie.net account. To me, it seems wrong to allow people to use something that was offered for free by us and now charge for it.
Well, I guess if any of you are Myth 2 players, or are just curious, I recommend checking out bungie.net's Myth Vault. Ask questions on the forum, or post them in our FUQ (frequently unanswered questions) database.
-Tom
Bungie.net System Overlord
I am Catholic myself, and I'd have to agree with you here. I hate it when people try and evangelize. I'll answer questions to those who are curious and want to know more, but faith in something greater than yourself must be an individual choice. If you are simply following something a parent or a charismatic leader feeds you, you don't really have true faith. I go to church now because of a choice of something I believe in, not because I've done it before.
And, just to make a side point about people like Falwell and Robertson, and their ilk, since they do more to harm the "right" then help it:
What many people must realize (especially when they look at the "leaders" of their own religion) is that organized religion is fundamentally a human construction. The issue of the faith is much more personal, between God (or whatever you call Him/Her) and yourself. The construct exists in most cases to assist individuals in keeping their faith within the secular world. At least, that usually is the original intent when it is created. But like any human construct, they are subject to the same imperfections as human beings: we can be very selfish, violent, greedy, sexist, racist, etc. This leads to the corruption we see in greedy televangelists, the evils of extremists such as those who murder doctors to protect unborn children, the religious wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, and those responsible for Tuesday. Remember however, that these religions can also produce ultimate charity: witness the work of many religious charities to help the poor. Organized religion can be a lot like a gun: source of strength that can be used for commiting evil act, as well as defending the innocent against evil itself.
Finally, U.S. citizens might do well to remember something quoted from a person whom I wish I could remember their name:
"... This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
Sure, you could find instructions for building a nuclear device on the Net. Then again, do you think you can find technical schematics for all kinds of US, Russian, and other misc. countries' nuclear weapons? Bear in mind that the two hard drives that are gone are designed to be plugged into a laptop in the field for use by our rapid response team in the event of a nuclear emergency. This is the precise engineering details of several different types of weapons, enough for arming, disarming, and probably even some duplication.
** The Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days. That's religion. That has no place in a biology classroom. **
Ah, but you make an assumption there. You assume a day means 24 hours as we define it by the definition of the second. That is a rather odd thing to say, given that the definition of a day couldn't possibly exist until the Earth was created to give the effect of day and night. The Earth wasn't "created" until the 3 or 4th day. So, a "day" could be the millions of years necessary to form the solar system... etc.
I agree that such discussions should be taking place, but in Kansas, they decided to remove the testing of the macro evolution theory from the biology curriculm. As someone earlier in this thread pointed out, evolution is hard to test as a high school student can't exactly experiment with it within the confines of a classroom semester. They were being lazy, and the media called them on it. It is that simple.
At any rate, you missed the point of the story if you think the Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days. The story is meant to teach even the most uneducated person that God created everything, he didn't do it instantly (it took time), and in the end, for better or for worse, he saw that it was good. Don't listen to the crap the fundamentalist Christians put out.
In the end, each person must come to know the truth themselves, and cannot have it spoon fed to them without question. You were given the capacity to know the truth and the free will to act upon it. Not doing so is a waste of material.
Okay, first of all, some people are really blowing this out of proportion. They just decided not to put it on the standardized state tests, not ban it.
Second, regarding the religion vs. science problem these people have, I really don't understand why there is a problem. Science deals with the physical world. It attempts to determine the nature of our universe through observation and experimentation. It is constantly updating the world view as new observations and data become available.
Religion, on the other hand, attempts to explain with the more philosophical and non-empirical issues. Things such as the purpose of creation, the who and why of it, how it is going to end, and what does it all mean. Religion shouldn't describe how things happen that science can explain, except in instances when what happened are above our current level of understanding.
Take for example the big bang theory of the creation of this universe. Some idiot fundamentalist Christians would have you believe that everything was created in 6 days, simply because the Bible said so. They need to be reminded of the context of the Genesis story. That story was passed down by voice, not by writing for several thousand years before it was written down, and has since been translated, retold, and translated again for several more thousand years. Also, they forget that this story was initially intended for simple farmers and hunters, not scientists. The Genesis story was meant to inform the reader that God created everything from nothing, and did it over a period of time, and that what he created was good. HOW he did that is not an issue. Whether he made homo sapiens by evolving us or whatever else doesn't matter to teach the religion of the matter.
As you can see, these are not opposing philosophies. They just are attempting to answer different questions. Science wants to know what is going on, and how it happens. Religion wants to know who did it and why. The problem occurs when they go out of their realm of expertise. Then everything essentially goes to hell.