I'm implying Bungie could have a particular disdain for their audience which makes it easy to pull things like this.
A rather baseless accusation given their level of invovlement with their fans, the services they provide on their site, the weekly updates to keep everyone up to date on progress, the multiplayer beta, etc.
This is evident in their blithe, "we won't do it if it's too hard", dismissal of the feature.
They never said anything of the sort. A month ago they said they were working on it, but there were challenges involved. If they couldn't get it working satisfactorily, they wouldn't include it, the implication being that if they could get it working satisfactorily, they would include it. You make it sound like they couldn't e bothered when in fact they've been working very hard at it and won't settle for a semi-functional, not very satisfactory implementation - the very opposite of your accusation. In fact, if you read the Ars Technica journal entry on the subject, you'll find the devs making comments to that effect and reporting that the problems they mentioned have been largely overcome.
Oh, well since they said they wanted to improve it, that settles it.
Of course I finished that sentence by talking about the actions they were taking to back up their words, so really, what was the point in that rather glib response?
Google this issue and you'll find, overwhelmingly, it's unpopular as all hell, and the game hasn't even been released yet.
You think Halo 3 is unpopular? That's a joke. People who complain are always going to generate more noise than people who are happy. The major news sites seem pretty excited about it and you can bet that sales will be huge when it's released.
Last time I checked your commentary on my gripes has far exceeded the length of my, well...gripes.
Though my comments were based on reasoned arguments, rather than baseless whining.
Incidentally, given that you ignored the first part of my post, where I pointed out the potential difficulties, I assume that you now agree that it is a non-trivial task and we won't be able to say with any certainty how difficult it would be until we see the final game?
They're not going the extra mile like they used to back in the days of Marathon and Myth
Then what do you call a public beta? That's pretty cool. Every indication they've given so far is that they're working pretty hard on a lot of features. Really, what did they do in the old days that represented a bigger effort than what they're making now? Don't get me wrong, I loved Marathon and Myth and the company Bungie was back then, but I think a lot of people are letting bitterness over their purchase by Microsoft to cloud their judgement.
even though they have bigger budgets behind them than they had probably ever imagined back when they were up all night writing the networking code for Marathon in their barely-afforded office space.
Okay, they probably put in longer days then, but they had a tighter schedule and if they didn't, they were in danger of going under. Now that their jobs are secure, I imagine they work more sane hours and actually get the chance to interact with friends and family. Surely you don't begrudge them having a life now, or do you expect programmers to work 80 hour weeks so that you can have the exact game you envisage (and inevitably burn out)?
Halo 3 is looking like Halo 2 plus some new weapons and slightly better graphics.
The beta, which was just a fraction of the game showed off a lot more than that. You haven't even seen the final game yet.
Honestly I was expecting a lot more, considering however many thousands and thousands of people will be buying the game.
What does the number of people buying the game have to do with the features they add and the technical limitations imposed on what they can do? It's not like a thousand people thinking happy thoughts can make electrons flow faster.
So far, you've made a lot of complaints, but when presented with the facts and reasoned arguments, all you've done is ignore the points and continue to complain. Did you drop the stuff about the increased difficulty of making Halo 3 capable of co-op on Xbox Live compared with Halo or Halo 2 because you concede that maybe it is actually quite a difficult task, or because you didn't want to admit that it might be a lot harder that you expected?
No kidding. Three games in, and we're going to be happy with just the bare minimum, eh?
That's a bit of a non-sequiteur, given that bare minimum would imply minimal features within those game modes. If you define the quality of a game as being related to the number of game modes then why don't you just go play Mario Party all day?
Maybe some of us want more than just another online multiplayer deathmatch/CTF first person game. I mean, it's only been done hundreds of times.
Yes. It's called the FPS genre. If you want a different style of game, play something from another genre. If Halo didn't meet that description, it wouldn't be an FPS. It's like complaining your car has 4 wheels and no wings. If you want to fly, use a plane!
Maybe some of us want a killer storyline/campaign that we can enjoy along with our friends.
And Bungie has been providing that in their FPSes for over a decade. You can have that and still provide people with multiplayer deathmatch/CTF.
Maybe some of us are tired of playing effectively the same fucking game over and over with the slighest improvement in graphics or sound each time (I'm referring to how the game industry keeps spitting out FPSes that are the same every time)
I recall Halo being pretty different to most FPSes, with Tribes and Marathon being the most similar games to it, but they weren't terribly mainstream. Halo 2 was an evolutionary improvement in many areas with dual-weilding, vehicle hijacking, even more multiplayer configuration options, the fantastic party system for online play, etc. Halo 3 again looks to be an evolutionary improvement. Bear in mind that we've only seen a fraction of the multiplayer side of things from a beta edition. There's going to be a heck of a lot more in the released game and it'll be more refined by then.
Multiplayer shouldn't just mean "deathmatch" and "kill everyone else".
It's a game about running around shooting people. There are game modes that are about territory, delivering bombs, capturing flags etc., but people play FPSes to shoot stuff, just like they play racing games to race people. There was a race mode in Halo 1, but it wasn't very popular.
Er, well, it should, actually.
did you bother to read my rational? If so, what is your response to it? Do you expect that Bungie's 'unlimited' budget will be used to upgrade the network infrastructure for everyone who plays Halo 3 to improve their bandwidth and latency? As I said before, this game is even more complex than the last 2, yet network infrastructure is not significantly better, so the task is harder, especially given that neither of the previous games provided for even LAN co-op play; it was all on the one machine, so there is no prior experience to rely on.
Online Co-op is not some insignificant feature, either. It's not as if implementing online co-op is like solving the remaining Hilbert problems, its a feature that already exists in many successful games, and it exists on a scale similar to what would work in a Halo-type game.
Without having actually played the single player/co-op campaign, I don't think anyone can say if co-op on the scale of Halo 3 has been done before. Even going a little beyond what has been done before could prove to be an unsatisfactory experience given limitations on bandwidth and latency. Just because something is on a similar scale doesn't mean that's achievable e.g. propelling a warship at high speed through water. Thanks to a number of factors, including resistance from the water, going from 20 knots to 24 knots doesn't require a relatively straightforward 20% increase in power; it requires a 100% increase for a lot of ships. Going from 30 to 34 looks like a smaller percentage increase in power would be required but it's going to be around 100% again, dwarfing 20-24 in absolute terms. Not a big jump in scale, but a massive jump in difficulty.
From what I have heard about Halo 3 co-op in comparison to say GoW co-op, players are going to cover a larger area, scripting is more complex and there are going to be more (and more complex) AI entities to keep in sync. If GoW was pushing the 360 close to what could be done over the net, it's possible that Halo 3 could currently be going beyond that.
I'll restate it and maybe it will become clearer: Halo 2 was (by Bungie's own admission) mediocre in far too many places, yet it made a ton of money and is essentially the franchise for Microsoft. Would I need to extrapolate the Pavlovian mechanic any further? I'm sure you're smart enough to follow me.
Sure, there were bits that were mediocre, but there was a lot more that they were justifiably proud of. Implying that all (or a majority) of Halo fans are idiots who will buy anything is just trolling and to suggest that inadequacies in Halo 2 will lead to inadequacies in Halo 3 is foolish given their stated desire to improve what was unpopular and their actions in going so far as to release a multiplayer beta to help with that process.
Bungie has been given precious, "ship when it's done" treatment from Microsoft from the get-go on Halo 3, yet they can't manage to touch all the bases?
They never promised on-line co-op and they haven't said it won't be provided. All we know is that a month ago, they were finding it difficult to get in working satisfactorily and would prefer to deliver a satisfying experience with the rest of the product than add in an unsatisfactory and unreliable element that people would just whine about.
I honestly thought Bungie was better than that, and I've never heard a developer scream "uncle" quite like this.
The only people I see screaming are the whiners on forums like this who are throwing a hissy fit that they might not get everything exactly the way they want it, regardless of the technical challenges involved, their utter lack of knowledge about the game and therefore the difficulty it would pose, the absence of any actual announcement by Bungie and any sort of grip on reality at all. You'd think it was Diakatana for all the whinging going on.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the video games version of a filler filled album. Whereby an established artist gives us an average/sub-par release due to complacency, degree of difficulty, cocaine addiction, whatever...
Right. Because the quality of a game is dependent entirely on its Internet co-op capabilities. Single player, on-line deathmatch, Local co-op and LAN co-op are insignificant features that no-one wants.
Ok guys, you're "not stupid", you know people want the feature, yet, you decide not to give it to us anyway. WTF are you guys, our first girlfriends?? The "if it's too difficult, we won't do it" response REEKS of complacency.
Right. Because in the real world, technical limitations just vanish when people want something and yell really loud.
It would not be out of the realm of possibilty to say that the success of a subpar Halo 2 (i.e. no matter what we put out there, those f-ing meatheads will buy it) would fuel a supbar Halo 3. Hope you enjoyed your stay, Bungie
No. I think it's clearly impossible that a successful game would lead to another game being developed. Really, what were you thinking?
Comparing the small Myth maps with huge Halo maps and limited Myth AI with complex Halo AI is absurd. And playing co-op over the Internet is not a basic expectation. Deathmatch, CTF, etc. and local co-op is the basic expectation. LAN co-op is desired and co-op over the net, a challenging feature, would be a nice bonus. This being the third game in the series doesn't suddenly make the issue easier; in fact it probably makes it harder because maps are bigger, there are more enemies, more AIs to keep in sync, etc. while bandwidth and latency are still an issue.
Clearly that's impossible, since there's absolutely no evidence for any of the major Christian dogma.
Your glibness is astounding. If that was really true, do you think so many people would believe? Do you think that so many books would be written on the subject, so many people convinced by what they hear and read? Do you have any idea about the historicity of the gospels in comparison to other ancient documents that are held in high regard by historians? It turns out the gospels are written closer to the time of events, our earliest copies come from closer to the time, they're more complete and there are more of them. Scholars accept Tacitus, Josephus, etc. as valid historical records, but the gospels have significantly better credentials.
There's no evidence that Jesus said any of the stuff he's held to say in the Bible
Yes there is: the Bible itself, which is a much better source than other widely accepted historical documents.
There's no evidence of resurrection.
There's the testimony of a lot of people in the Bible itself and elsewhere. A lot of people who died claiming that he rose from the dead. The disciples were killed for preaching it and they for a fact it he had risen or not. No-one was ever able to produce a body and shut up the early church, which quite a few people would have had an interest in doing. In fact the first Christians would have been far too terrified to have actually started the church in the first place if they hadn't actually seen Jesus risen for themselves, after all they had all deserted him.
If the beliefs of Christians were based on facts and evidence, they'd be atheists.
Which clearly isn't the case, so why don't you take the fingers out of years, open your eyes, drop the glib, arrogant attitude and actually examine the evidence that is there. Maybe you won't find it convincing, but it's pure childishness to pretend that there is none.
People wrongly conflate "faith" and "trust." Trust is when you believe in something that hasn't let you down. Faith is when you believe in something that has always let you down.
Just because that's your definition of faith, doesn't mean it's the biblical definition. Take a look in a theological dictionary and see what it says about faith. You can't take what someone else has written and use your own definitions of words to understand what they mean; you have to know what their definitions are and the biblical definition of faith is completely different to your own. Pretending otherwise is engaging with a fantasy belief system that doesn't actually represent Christianity at all.
You give interesting definitions of faith. Of course, they're completely different to biblical faith since the Israelites were constantly told to remember what they had seen God done and the gospels were written after investigation of the facts, with the intention of providing evidence that would give people a reason to belief. For a Christian, faith is based on facts and evidence. Paul even wrote that if Christ didn't rise from the dead, then Christians were to be pitied above all other people; rather different to your 'believing in spite of the evidence' definition.
I know you you're not a creationist, and that you're trying to find some reasonable common ground between religion and science, and say that "it's all good in the 'hood baby," but I'm sorry. Your statement doesn't make any sense.
Actually, the two can be quite easily reconciled if you posit that the universe was created in a pre-aged state, which would be consistent with the creation of mankind (and the animals for that matter). Adam and Eve didn't have to grow up from being foetuses or babies, so why not create a universe that behaves as if it had already been around for several billion years? Doesn't matter from the perspective of science whether the big bang occurred billions of years ago, or the universe was created a few thousand years ago, merely looking as it was billions of years old. If observations of two systems are identical, then the scientific models we create wouldn't change. Ultimately science isn't concerned with the true nature or reality; it is concerned with building models that duplicate the observations we make of reality.
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith.
Would that be why, in the Bible, God keeps telling people to remember the things he had done in the past i.e. points to evidence of his faithfulness as a reason to trust him?
If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong.
Strangely, the book of John (amongst others) was written with the express intent of providing evidence for people to believe (John 20:30-31
He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.
The God of the Bible seems to have been pretty keen to provide evidence and reveal himself to the world.
The arrogance of the goddamn literal read types is just astounding [...] a literal-read weenie [...] The worst thing that can be said about the literal read types, is that they have nothing to look up to. They know all there is to know about god and everything. So very very sad.
Read that and ask yourself who comes across as arrogant? Don't you think it's a little presumptuous to assume you know what every biblical literalistic thinks and does? To say 'The worst thing about Slashdot Christian-bashers is they know all there is to know about Christians and everything. So very very sad." would be more accurate.
Well, possibly a good start would be not to make a presentation in which your basic message is "I intend to destroy you completely and wipe your project from the face of the planet"?
It's disgraceful that a business should want to be successful, isn't it?
iTunes does ignore 'The' (i.e. 'The Beatles' would be found with the Bs, not the Ts)but it obviously can't tell which way round other names should be interpreted.
Personally, I would much rather have seen the Apple guys throw their support behind the Gecko engine, and Camino. It's not that KHTML/AWK is a bad browser base, I just think it would have been easier to use an engine that was already widely available cross platform.
This has been said before and will doubtlessly be sad again. The developers looked at a few engines and found that they would have to do a lot less work to turn KHTML into the browser they wanted because it was a lot less complex.
I can't believe this ridiculous white-washing of history.
Galileo wouldn't have got in so much trouble if he hadn't mocked the Pope. After he did that, his scientific theories were used as grounds to have him arrested. IF you annoy a powerful person and they have you charged for something, it doesn't mean they genuinely think you're guilty of it. Of course some people did have religious objections to his theories, but even that doesn't prove the original poster's claims. Just because some people use religion to suppress scientific research does not mean that Christianity is fundamentally opposed to science. If it was, then why have there been quite a few exceptional Christian scientists such as Faraday and Maxwell? They had no problem with being evangelicals and no-one could deny the greatness of their contribution to science.
I wonder how you would construe that to not be a conflict of science and religion.
One conflict (or even several conflicts) does not prove a fundamental inability for Christians to be scientists, to support scientific research, and to be spurred on in the realm of science by their religious convictions, especially not when there is evidence that people's faith inspires them to do great things in the realm of science.
The statistics speak for themselves: science, especially the natural sciences, is corrosive for religious faith
The survey you linked to suggests that scientists are less likely to be religious these days. It's quite a leap to go from that to saying that Christianity and science are fundamentally opposed, especially given that the survey shows that some scientists are religious and do not see any conflict between their faith and science.
and religion is corrosive for education
Some Christians are opposed to the theory of evolution on religious grounds, therefore all religion is corrosive to all education? If that's what you're saying, then your logic is quite poor. Leaving aside any debate about evolution itself, there are plenty of Christians who have no problem with evolution, with the caveat that what we observe as random is still happening under the purview of God's providence and sovereignty and is in fact not a surprise to him, but is instead happening according to his divine will. Science is of course incapable of telling the difference between the two, so there is no conflict there. You could walk into a number of large evangelical churches in London, Oxford, Cambridge, or a great many other places, ask the congregation and the minister what they think and quite a few would take that view. Regarding Genesis 1, they would point out that it is structured in such a way as to directly refute the claims of other Middle-Eastern religions regarding creation and to instead show that the Israelite God is the Creator, that his creation is good and that man was made in his image, rather than being made as slaves for example.
If you don't believe it fuels indoctrination of ignorance, just look at how Ken Ham teaches children, the exhibits in his "museum", or the Trojan horse of the religionists -- the ID creationism.
If you don't believe that atheism is all about murdering those you disagree with and dragging your country into the mud, just look at Pol Pot and what he did in Cambodia.
Now if I made that as a serious argument, you'd call me a troll, wouldn't you?
It's almost amusing how you claim that there is no conflict between science and religion,
I've never claimed that people have not criticised scientific theories on religious grounds; I have merely claimed that Christianity is not fundamentally opposed to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
and base it on the fact that there are many scientists with religious beliefs, as if that meant anything after thousands of years o
Actually, if you want to get picky about it, the OT was written in Aramaic and then translated into Hebrew once the Hebrew language developed an alphabet
If you want to get picky, then yes, the Masoretic text contains both Hebrew and Aramaic, but the Old Testament is generally referred to as Hebrew text and students of it are required to study Hebrew. It doesn't affect my point, which was that translators go to the earliest reliable texts so multiple layers of translation isn't an issue.
Many of the stories are almost direct rip offs of Akkadian and Sumerian myths.
Or, alternatively, the Bible describes the actual historical events, which have had an impact on the developing mythology of other cultures.
I doubt there are many CoE members of the NRA. OR in favour of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iran. In fact, they were pretty vocally opposed to the war with Iraq. But why let facts get in the way of a chance to attack Christians.
To be fair now, there CoE is a pretty broad church, so you'd get a range of views on 'sacred space,' with quite a few vicars (including most of the ones I know) saying there's so no such thing as sacred space since we worship the person of Jesus, rather than having to to a temple to worship God.
Fair enough; you simply made assumptions and levelled accusations without even bothering to ask what I believe.
I have only told you that denying that Copernicus, Galileo and Da Vinci put forth sound science that was firmly rejected on religious grounds is disgusting.
You do like that strawman, don't you. I've never claimed that the science of Copernicus and Galileo wasn't opposed on religious grounds. As I have repeated pointed out, just because some people oppose science on a religious basis doesn't mean that their religion is fundamentally opposed to it. To suggest that is true, when plenty of Christians are scientists and advance the cause of scientific discovery, claiming they serve and worship God by doing so, is absurd. As for Da Vinci, I've already pointed out that the case you mentioned is not so clear cut as you try to make it seem. I'll put a question to you again that you failed to answer before: do you believe that everyone who doesn't carry an organ donor card is anti-science?
2- No.
Is that in reply to my question re: Christianity and science? If so, then you've wasted your time since all I was ever doing was pointing out that they aren't fundamentally opposed.
+ Making this about Christianity is indeed a strawman: the issue is religion.
Right. Because clearly the original post, in response to the field trip to a Creationist museum and mentioning Catholic scientists who at times met some opposition from the Catholic church clearly has nothing to do with Christianity and rebutting a claim that religiona nd science don't mix can't be countered by pointing out that Christianity and science don't mix.
You changed that to fit your trolling about Faraday et al (seriously, let it go),
How is Faraday being a scientist and an evangelical Christian irrelevant to a discussion about whether or not Christianity and science can ever mix? Seriously, I'd love to hear your logic on that.
who, I'm sorry, are not greater scientists than the ones who's injustices you deny.
That's a joke. They were arguably two of the greatest ever scientists and certainly contributed more than the three other mentioned, the injustices aginst whom I have never denied.
P.S. I find it quite... interesting that you obsess over WASP scientists, putting them on a pedestal above all others
Nice strawman there. You know, there's probably not anyone else reading this by now, so trying to paint me as a racist probably won't win you points with anyone else. By the way the original poster just mentioned white, Catholic Europeans. Maybe he's a racist too!
Making their particular religion the central point of a conversation that did not mention it.
Strangely, I never mentioned that they were white, Anglo-Saxon or, most relevant to your accusation, Protestant. I mentioned that they were Christian, which Copernicus would certainly have been regarded as, likely Galileo and less likely Da Vinci. Given that they faced opposition from the church, that the Creationist museum that sparked off this discussion is run by people who would claim to be Christian and the question of science and religion has revolved entirely around the Christian church, in what way is pointing out that some of the greatest ever scientists were Christians, irrelevant?
No, I ignored the part where you speculated without any reason that they might have been a threat, seeing as how there's no indication in the text that it was the case. Even in apologist literature there is no argument that Elisha was merely being physically defended by God, much less in the text itself.
The threat doesn't need to be explicitly stated in the text. Elijah and Elisha faced a lot of opposition in their work and Elisha at the time was near a centre of idolatry. These people were strongly opposed to them and large gangs of youths can very quickly turn violent.
It's a story about respect -- the kids were mocking the messenger, mocking his faith and by implication questioning the power of a God who would send such a bald (cursed) man as his messenger.
I never claimed that wasn't a part of it.
And no, my moral compass does not condone murdering 42 people because they shouted disrespectful insults and even curses (in the biblical sense) at a man who certainly deserved more respect.
I don't condone murder either. Though it's a rather pejorative term as it indicates unlawful killing, which of course I wouldn't advocate. Note that the killing here was by God, not by Elisha and it's perfectly within God's rights to do that as he is our creator and we have rebelled against him, deserving death in every case.
Back on topic: Those three people were scientists who ran afoul of religious authorities, and their science was suppressed by the church.
He's denying that. Taking it to the absurd, he's denying all church wrongdoings.
If we apply a little reductio ad absurdum to your claims, then every lawyer who ever defended a client in court thinks that no-one has ever been guilty of anything.
Did it ever occur to you to ask if I thought that Christians have ever stood in the way of science? Because if you had, I would have said 'Yes, of course they have, just as Christians have been guilty of wrongdoing in other areas. Ted Haggard is a pretty good recent example of that and the Bible is full of God's people making mistakes. The Bible wouldn't contain so many guidelines on living as a Christian and what to do when things go wrong if Christians were perfect.'
I might have been less verbose though.
My original intent was to bring some balance to the discussion and refute the absurd idea that Christianity and science are fundamentally opposed. Actually, I'm still interested in doing that.
I'm quite aware of that. Where did I claim he claimed that? The only bit of my post that you quoted quite clearly stated that I was rebutting the claim that 'Christianity and science don't mix,' not some strawman claim that 'Copernicus isn't a Christian.' I pointed out that Copernicus' faith is one of many pieces of evidence that refute the claim that Christianity and science don't mix.
he reminded us that their science was rejected for religious reasons.
Which is entirely different to Christianity and science not mixing. I know some people who are vegetarian for religious reasons. That doesn't mean Christianity and meat-eating don't mix.
N.B. I realise that he said 'religion and science don't mix' whereas I've been refuting that 'Christianity and science don't mix.' This isn't a strawman, but simply a narrowing of the debate since I'm not interested in defending other religions and the objection is being lodged principally against Christianity.
Now, given that I have deigned to answer your questions, please answer one of mine: Do you believe that Christianity is fundamentally opposed to science and if so, how do you reconcile that believe with the evidence I have posted regarding the faith of many scientists today and some of the greatest of the past, thinking particularly of Maxwell and Faraday?
The examples were excellent, Copernicus had am uncle to protect him but the founder of the church who's offshoot is now denying evolution was against his physics based on biblical passages. PERFECT example.
Your logic needs some work. Copernicus is a perfect example of how some Christians have no problem with scientific discoveries and some do i.e. Christianity is not intrinsically opposed to science. If I started using Pol Pot as an example of how atheism and freedom do not mix, you'd be up in arms.
Galileo was censored by the catholic church for defending the ideas of Copernicus that the church had then dismissed based on the exact same passage as Luther did when Copernicus was alive
His censure might well not have come about if he hadn't gone round insulting the pope, so it's not exactly a clear cut issue of rejecting science. And once again, not everyone in the church disagreed with Galileo, so it isn't in any way a proof that Christianity and science don't mix.
The church opposed Leonardo's research into medical science (amongst other, less famous misdeeds)
And why did they oppose it? Because they were opposed to science? No, it was because they wanted the bodies of the dead respected. Is every person who doesn't consent for their organs (or those of deceased relatives) to be donated to others fundamentally anti-science? No.
think about how much you respect the dead next time you need surgery, think about how your surgeon learned his skills.
I have numerous friends who are doctors and surgeons and am quite aware of how they learned their skills. I never said I agrees with the stance some members of the church took; I was merely pointing out that it was an ethical decision, rather than an anti-science decision.
If you genuinely believe that Christianity and science don't mix (the claim I was refuting, remember), then would you care to explain Faraday, Maxwell, McGrath, the faith of men such as Copernicus himself and the large numbers of Christians involved in scientific and related disciplines in centres of academia such as Oxford and Cambridge?
You missed out the bit where they were a physical threat. How does honesty figure into your moral compass? Or is deceit ok if it gives you the chance to mock something you don't like?
Slashdot Mirror
A rather baseless accusation given their level of invovlement with their fans, the services they provide on their site, the weekly updates to keep everyone up to date on progress, the multiplayer beta, etc.
They never said anything of the sort. A month ago they said they were working on it, but there were challenges involved. If they couldn't get it working satisfactorily, they wouldn't include it, the implication being that if they could get it working satisfactorily, they would include it. You make it sound like they couldn't e bothered when in fact they've been working very hard at it and won't settle for a semi-functional, not very satisfactory implementation - the very opposite of your accusation. In fact, if you read the Ars Technica journal entry on the subject, you'll find the devs making comments to that effect and reporting that the problems they mentioned have been largely overcome.
Of course I finished that sentence by talking about the actions they were taking to back up their words, so really, what was the point in that rather glib response?
You think Halo 3 is unpopular? That's a joke. People who complain are always going to generate more noise than people who are happy. The major news sites seem pretty excited about it and you can bet that sales will be huge when it's released.
Though my comments were based on reasoned arguments, rather than baseless whining.
Incidentally, given that you ignored the first part of my post, where I pointed out the potential difficulties, I assume that you now agree that it is a non-trivial task and we won't be able to say with any certainty how difficult it would be until we see the final game?
Then what do you call a public beta? That's pretty cool. Every indication they've given so far is that they're working pretty hard on a lot of features. Really, what did they do in the old days that represented a bigger effort than what they're making now? Don't get me wrong, I loved Marathon and Myth and the company Bungie was back then, but I think a lot of people are letting bitterness over their purchase by Microsoft to cloud their judgement.
Okay, they probably put in longer days then, but they had a tighter schedule and if they didn't, they were in danger of going under. Now that their jobs are secure, I imagine they work more sane hours and actually get the chance to interact with friends and family. Surely you don't begrudge them having a life now, or do you expect programmers to work 80 hour weeks so that you can have the exact game you envisage (and inevitably burn out)?
The beta, which was just a fraction of the game showed off a lot more than that. You haven't even seen the final game yet.
What does the number of people buying the game have to do with the features they add and the technical limitations imposed on what they can do? It's not like a thousand people thinking happy thoughts can make electrons flow faster.
So far, you've made a lot of complaints, but when presented with the facts and reasoned arguments, all you've done is ignore the points and continue to complain. Did you drop the stuff about the increased difficulty of making Halo 3 capable of co-op on Xbox Live compared with Halo or Halo 2 because you concede that maybe it is actually quite a difficult task, or because you didn't want to admit that it might be a lot harder that you expected?
That's a bit of a non-sequiteur, given that bare minimum would imply minimal features within those game modes. If you define the quality of a game as being related to the number of game modes then why don't you just go play Mario Party all day?
Yes. It's called the FPS genre. If you want a different style of game, play something from another genre. If Halo didn't meet that description, it wouldn't be an FPS. It's like complaining your car has 4 wheels and no wings. If you want to fly, use a plane!
And Bungie has been providing that in their FPSes for over a decade. You can have that and still provide people with multiplayer deathmatch/CTF.
I recall Halo being pretty different to most FPSes, with Tribes and Marathon being the most similar games to it, but they weren't terribly mainstream. Halo 2 was an evolutionary improvement in many areas with dual-weilding, vehicle hijacking, even more multiplayer configuration options, the fantastic party system for online play, etc. Halo 3 again looks to be an evolutionary improvement. Bear in mind that we've only seen a fraction of the multiplayer side of things from a beta edition. There's going to be a heck of a lot more in the released game and it'll be more refined by then.
It's a game about running around shooting people. There are game modes that are about territory, delivering bombs, capturing flags etc., but people play FPSes to shoot stuff, just like they play racing games to race people. There was a race mode in Halo 1, but it wasn't very popular.
did you bother to read my rational? If so, what is your response to it? Do you expect that Bungie's 'unlimited' budget will be used to upgrade the network infrastructure for everyone who plays Halo 3 to improve their bandwidth and latency? As I said before, this game is even more complex than the last 2, yet network infrastructure is not significantly better, so the task is harder, especially given that neither of the previous games provided for even LAN co-op play; it was all on the one machine, so there is no prior experience to rely on.
Without having actually played the single player/co-op campaign, I don't think anyone can say if co-op on the scale of Halo 3 has been done before. Even going a little beyond what has been done before could prove to be an unsatisfactory experience given limitations on bandwidth and latency. Just because something is on a similar scale doesn't mean that's achievable e.g. propelling a warship at high speed through water. Thanks to a number of factors, including resistance from the water, going from 20 knots to 24 knots doesn't require a relatively straightforward 20% increase in power; it requires a 100% increase for a lot of ships. Going from 30 to 34 looks like a smaller percentage increase in power would be required but it's going to be around 100% again, dwarfing 20-24 in absolute terms. Not a big jump in scale, but a massive jump in difficulty.
From what I have heard about Halo 3 co-op in comparison to say GoW co-op, players are going to cover a larger area, scripting is more complex and there are going to be more (and more complex) AI entities to keep in sync. If GoW was pushing the 360 close to what could be done over the net, it's possible that Halo 3 could currently be going beyond that.
Sure, there were bits that were mediocre, but there was a lot more that they were justifiably proud of. Implying that all (or a majority) of Halo fans are idiots who will buy anything is just trolling and to suggest that inadequacies in Halo 2 will lead to inadequacies in Halo 3 is foolish given their stated desire to improve what was unpopular and their actions in going so far as to release a multiplayer beta to help with that process.
They never promised on-line co-op and they haven't said it won't be provided. All we know is that a month ago, they were finding it difficult to get in working satisfactorily and would prefer to deliver a satisfying experience with the rest of the product than add in an unsatisfactory and unreliable element that people would just whine about.
The only people I see screaming are the whiners on forums like this who are throwing a hissy fit that they might not get everything exactly the way they want it, regardless of the technical challenges involved, their utter lack of knowledge about the game and therefore the difficulty it would pose, the absence of any actual announcement by Bungie and any sort of grip on reality at all. You'd think it was Diakatana for all the whinging going on.
Right. Because the quality of a game is dependent entirely on its Internet co-op capabilities. Single player, on-line deathmatch, Local co-op and LAN co-op are insignificant features that no-one wants.
Right. Because in the real world, technical limitations just vanish when people want something and yell really loud.
No. I think it's clearly impossible that a successful game would lead to another game being developed. Really, what were you thinking?
Comparing the small Myth maps with huge Halo maps and limited Myth AI with complex Halo AI is absurd. And playing co-op over the Internet is not a basic expectation. Deathmatch, CTF, etc. and local co-op is the basic expectation. LAN co-op is desired and co-op over the net, a challenging feature, would be a nice bonus. This being the third game in the series doesn't suddenly make the issue easier; in fact it probably makes it harder because maps are bigger, there are more enemies, more AIs to keep in sync, etc. while bandwidth and latency are still an issue.
At the very least, the Myth series was playable online and was great fun back in the days of 33.6 modems.
Your glibness is astounding. If that was really true, do you think so many people would believe? Do you think that so many books would be written on the subject, so many people convinced by what they hear and read? Do you have any idea about the historicity of the gospels in comparison to other ancient documents that are held in high regard by historians? It turns out the gospels are written closer to the time of events, our earliest copies come from closer to the time, they're more complete and there are more of them. Scholars accept Tacitus, Josephus, etc. as valid historical records, but the gospels have significantly better credentials.
Yes there is: the Bible itself, which is a much better source than other widely accepted historical documents.
There's the testimony of a lot of people in the Bible itself and elsewhere. A lot of people who died claiming that he rose from the dead. The disciples were killed for preaching it and they for a fact it he had risen or not. No-one was ever able to produce a body and shut up the early church, which quite a few people would have had an interest in doing. In fact the first Christians would have been far too terrified to have actually started the church in the first place if they hadn't actually seen Jesus risen for themselves, after all they had all deserted him.
Which clearly isn't the case, so why don't you take the fingers out of years, open your eyes, drop the glib, arrogant attitude and actually examine the evidence that is there. Maybe you won't find it convincing, but it's pure childishness to pretend that there is none.
Just because that's your definition of faith, doesn't mean it's the biblical definition. Take a look in a theological dictionary and see what it says about faith. You can't take what someone else has written and use your own definitions of words to understand what they mean; you have to know what their definitions are and the biblical definition of faith is completely different to your own. Pretending otherwise is engaging with a fantasy belief system that doesn't actually represent Christianity at all.
You give interesting definitions of faith. Of course, they're completely different to biblical faith since the Israelites were constantly told to remember what they had seen God done and the gospels were written after investigation of the facts, with the intention of providing evidence that would give people a reason to belief. For a Christian, faith is based on facts and evidence. Paul even wrote that if Christ didn't rise from the dead, then Christians were to be pitied above all other people; rather different to your 'believing in spite of the evidence' definition.
Actually, the two can be quite easily reconciled if you posit that the universe was created in a pre-aged state, which would be consistent with the creation of mankind (and the animals for that matter). Adam and Eve didn't have to grow up from being foetuses or babies, so why not create a universe that behaves as if it had already been around for several billion years? Doesn't matter from the perspective of science whether the big bang occurred billions of years ago, or the universe was created a few thousand years ago, merely looking as it was billions of years old. If observations of two systems are identical, then the scientific models we create wouldn't change. Ultimately science isn't concerned with the true nature or reality; it is concerned with building models that duplicate the observations we make of reality.
Would that be why, in the Bible, God keeps telling people to remember the things he had done in the past i.e. points to evidence of his faithfulness as a reason to trust him?
Strangely, the book of John (amongst others) was written with the express intent of providing evidence for people to believe (John 20:30-31
The God of the Bible seems to have been pretty keen to provide evidence and reveal himself to the world.
Read that and ask yourself who comes across as arrogant? Don't you think it's a little presumptuous to assume you know what every biblical literalistic thinks and does? To say 'The worst thing about Slashdot Christian-bashers is they know all there is to know about Christians and everything. So very very sad." would be more accurate.
You'd find them filed under 'The' as only the first 'The' is ignored and even then, only if it is the first word and not the only word.
It's disgraceful that a business should want to be successful, isn't it?
iTunes does ignore 'The' (i.e. 'The Beatles' would be found with the Bs, not the Ts)but it obviously can't tell which way round other names should be interpreted.
This has been said before and will doubtlessly be sad again. The developers looked at a few engines and found that they would have to do a lot less work to turn KHTML into the browser they wanted because it was a lot less complex.
Galileo wouldn't have got in so much trouble if he hadn't mocked the Pope. After he did that, his scientific theories were used as grounds to have him arrested. IF you annoy a powerful person and they have you charged for something, it doesn't mean they genuinely think you're guilty of it. Of course some people did have religious objections to his theories, but even that doesn't prove the original poster's claims. Just because some people use religion to suppress scientific research does not mean that Christianity is fundamentally opposed to science. If it was, then why have there been quite a few exceptional Christian scientists such as Faraday and Maxwell? They had no problem with being evangelicals and no-one could deny the greatness of their contribution to science.
One conflict (or even several conflicts) does not prove a fundamental inability for Christians to be scientists, to support scientific research, and to be spurred on in the realm of science by their religious convictions, especially not when there is evidence that people's faith inspires them to do great things in the realm of science.
The survey you linked to suggests that scientists are less likely to be religious these days. It's quite a leap to go from that to saying that Christianity and science are fundamentally opposed, especially given that the survey shows that some scientists are religious and do not see any conflict between their faith and science.
Some Christians are opposed to the theory of evolution on religious grounds, therefore all religion is corrosive to all education? If that's what you're saying, then your logic is quite poor. Leaving aside any debate about evolution itself, there are plenty of Christians who have no problem with evolution, with the caveat that what we observe as random is still happening under the purview of God's providence and sovereignty and is in fact not a surprise to him, but is instead happening according to his divine will. Science is of course incapable of telling the difference between the two, so there is no conflict there. You could walk into a number of large evangelical churches in London, Oxford, Cambridge, or a great many other places, ask the congregation and the minister what they think and quite a few would take that view. Regarding Genesis 1, they would point out that it is structured in such a way as to directly refute the claims of other Middle-Eastern religions regarding creation and to instead show that the Israelite God is the Creator, that his creation is good and that man was made in his image, rather than being made as slaves for example.
If you don't believe that atheism is all about murdering those you disagree with and dragging your country into the mud, just look at Pol Pot and what he did in Cambodia.
Now if I made that as a serious argument, you'd call me a troll, wouldn't you?
I've never claimed that people have not criticised scientific theories on religious grounds; I have merely claimed that Christianity is not fundamentally opposed to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
If you want to get picky, then yes, the Masoretic text contains both Hebrew and Aramaic, but the Old Testament is generally referred to as Hebrew text and students of it are required to study Hebrew. It doesn't affect my point, which was that translators go to the earliest reliable texts so multiple layers of translation isn't an issue.
Or, alternatively, the Bible describes the actual historical events, which have had an impact on the developing mythology of other cultures.
I doubt there are many CoE members of the NRA. OR in favour of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iran. In fact, they were pretty vocally opposed to the war with Iraq. But why let facts get in the way of a chance to attack Christians.
To be fair now, there CoE is a pretty broad church, so you'd get a range of views on 'sacred space,' with quite a few vicars (including most of the ones I know) saying there's so no such thing as sacred space since we worship the person of Jesus, rather than having to to a temple to worship God.
Fair enough; you simply made assumptions and levelled accusations without even bothering to ask what I believe.
You do like that strawman, don't you. I've never claimed that the science of Copernicus and Galileo wasn't opposed on religious grounds. As I have repeated pointed out, just because some people oppose science on a religious basis doesn't mean that their religion is fundamentally opposed to it. To suggest that is true, when plenty of Christians are scientists and advance the cause of scientific discovery, claiming they serve and worship God by doing so, is absurd. As for Da Vinci, I've already pointed out that the case you mentioned is not so clear cut as you try to make it seem. I'll put a question to you again that you failed to answer before: do you believe that everyone who doesn't carry an organ donor card is anti-science?
Is that in reply to my question re: Christianity and science? If so, then you've wasted your time since all I was ever doing was pointing out that they aren't fundamentally opposed.
Right. Because clearly the original post, in response to the field trip to a Creationist museum and mentioning Catholic scientists who at times met some opposition from the Catholic church clearly has nothing to do with Christianity and rebutting a claim that religiona nd science don't mix can't be countered by pointing out that Christianity and science don't mix.
How is Faraday being a scientist and an evangelical Christian irrelevant to a discussion about whether or not Christianity and science can ever mix? Seriously, I'd love to hear your logic on that.
That's a joke. They were arguably two of the greatest ever scientists and certainly contributed more than the three other mentioned, the injustices aginst whom I have never denied.
Nice strawman there. You know, there's probably not anyone else reading this by now, so trying to paint me as a racist probably won't win you points with anyone else. By the way the original poster just mentioned white, Catholic Europeans. Maybe he's a racist too!
Strangely, I never mentioned that they were white, Anglo-Saxon or, most relevant to your accusation, Protestant. I mentioned that they were Christian, which Copernicus would certainly have been regarded as, likely Galileo and less likely Da Vinci. Given that they faced opposition from the church, that the Creationist museum that sparked off this discussion is run by people who would claim to be Christian and the question of science and religion has revolved entirely around the Christian church, in what way is pointing out that some of the greatest ever scientists were Christians, irrelevant?
The threat doesn't need to be explicitly stated in the text. Elijah and Elisha faced a lot of opposition in their work and Elisha at the time was near a centre of idolatry. These people were strongly opposed to them and large gangs of youths can very quickly turn violent.
I never claimed that wasn't a part of it.
I don't condone murder either. Though it's a rather pejorative term as it indicates unlawful killing, which of course I wouldn't advocate. Note that the killing here was by God, not by Elisha and it's perfectly within God's rights to do that as he is our creator and we have rebelled against him, deserving death in every case.
If we apply a little reductio ad absurdum to your claims, then every lawyer who ever defended a client in court thinks that no-one has ever been guilty of anything.
Did it ever occur to you to ask if I thought that Christians have ever stood in the way of science? Because if you had, I would have said 'Yes, of course they have, just as Christians have been guilty of wrongdoing in other areas. Ted Haggard is a pretty good recent example of that and the Bible is full of God's people making mistakes. The Bible wouldn't contain so many guidelines on living as a Christian and what to do when things go wrong if Christians were perfect.'
I might have been less verbose though.
My original intent was to bring some balance to the discussion and refute the absurd idea that Christianity and science are fundamentally opposed. Actually, I'm still interested in doing that.
Don't you think that's a little hypocritical?
I'm quite aware of that. Where did I claim he claimed that? The only bit of my post that you quoted quite clearly stated that I was rebutting the claim that 'Christianity and science don't mix,' not some strawman claim that 'Copernicus isn't a Christian.' I pointed out that Copernicus' faith is one of many pieces of evidence that refute the claim that Christianity and science don't mix.
Which is entirely different to Christianity and science not mixing. I know some people who are vegetarian for religious reasons. That doesn't mean Christianity and meat-eating don't mix.
N.B. I realise that he said 'religion and science don't mix' whereas I've been refuting that 'Christianity and science don't mix.' This isn't a strawman, but simply a narrowing of the debate since I'm not interested in defending other religions and the objection is being lodged principally against Christianity.
Now, given that I have deigned to answer your questions, please answer one of mine: Do you believe that Christianity is fundamentally opposed to science and if so, how do you reconcile that believe with the evidence I have posted regarding the faith of many scientists today and some of the greatest of the past, thinking particularly of Maxwell and Faraday?
Your logic needs some work. Copernicus is a perfect example of how some Christians have no problem with scientific discoveries and some do i.e. Christianity is not intrinsically opposed to science. If I started using Pol Pot as an example of how atheism and freedom do not mix, you'd be up in arms.
His censure might well not have come about if he hadn't gone round insulting the pope, so it's not exactly a clear cut issue of rejecting science. And once again, not everyone in the church disagreed with Galileo, so it isn't in any way a proof that Christianity and science don't mix.
And why did they oppose it? Because they were opposed to science? No, it was because they wanted the bodies of the dead respected. Is every person who doesn't consent for their organs (or those of deceased relatives) to be donated to others fundamentally anti-science? No.
I have numerous friends who are doctors and surgeons and am quite aware of how they learned their skills. I never said I agrees with the stance some members of the church took; I was merely pointing out that it was an ethical decision, rather than an anti-science decision.
If you genuinely believe that Christianity and science don't mix (the claim I was refuting, remember), then would you care to explain Faraday, Maxwell, McGrath, the faith of men such as Copernicus himself and the large numbers of Christians involved in scientific and related disciplines in centres of academia such as Oxford and Cambridge?
You missed out the bit where they were a physical threat. How does honesty figure into your moral compass? Or is deceit ok if it gives you the chance to mock something you don't like?