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An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

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Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#171

Post by naikrovek »

simonh wrote: post #125
naikrovek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds strange I know. There is nothing strange about that, unfortunately. It's just how people work. Things like this are also why I sincerely hope that humanity eventually dies off and is replaced by literally any species, natural or artificial, that bases decisions on logic and facts. There is no such thing as a meritocracy when humans are involved, no matter how much we delude ourselves to believe otherwise.

The problem with that is logic doesn’t provide goals, priorities or motivation to achieve them. I was thinking about this recently while watching Raised By Wolves. The Androids express feelings and emotions, but this isn’t necessarily unrealistic. That could be a useful way to encode goals and evaluate priorities.

I didn't describe my logic, so to which logic are you referring? I made some statements which I believe to be true.

You're just contributing to my beliefs that humanity is entirely worthless.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#172

Post by numpad0 »

loosescrews wrote: post #90

Has Xbox ever been profitable for Microsoft? The rumors I have always heard indicated that it wasn't [1]. Maybe it was worthwhile for protecting their Windows business, maybe they never should have bothered. Even if it is profitable now (I can't find any information one way or another), it doesn't seem like it turned out to be a worthwhile investment. Maybe Steve Ballmer was right? [1] https://www.cgmagonline.com/201…

The point of Xbox is to maintain a stalemate against PlayStation.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#173

Post by m463 »

jmkd wrote: post #122
grababner wrote: post #74

'He tells us: "Eventually somebody would come back to you with your idea – they would say, 'Hey, you know, this doesn't need Windows at all'. And you have to control your urge to fucking kill them, because you've been telling them that for two years and now they finally come up with it like it's their idea. But that's the Jedi mind trick." ' OMG. I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubb…

The art of diplomacy is to let other people have your way

Come on, if I wanted your opinion, I'd give it to you.

:)

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#174

Post by paulryanrogers »

fenderbluesjr wrote: post #151
watwut wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why putting character flaws into quotes? They are still character flaws, the same way as same behavior is if it is not coming from rich powergul person. There is no reason to pretend it is something special. If they helped him to get more money and more credit and what not, that does not make them not flaws.

Calling them flaws would seem to me to be a subjective position. Personality traits are perceived differently depending on what the observer is sensitive to. Somebody that is considered rude in a yoga clinic might not be perceived the same way on a construction site.

Is there any culture in which claiming credit for the ideas and innovations of others is considered positive?

And how many would agree it's healthy?

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#175

Post by holbrad »

"Microsoft's choice of codename for the console project – Midway – was a deliberate statement, one that may seem problematic in a more enlightened age, referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese. "

Hard to believe someone wrote that non-ironically...

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#176

Post by dude_bro »

grababner wrote: post #74

'He tells us: "Eventually somebody would come back to you with your idea – they would say, 'Hey, you know, this doesn't need Windows at all'. And you have to control your urge to fucking kill them, because you've been telling them that for two years and now they finally come up with it like it's their idea. But that's the Jedi mind trick." ' OMG. I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubb…

That's basically the core of managing without authority. If you want people to do something but they don't report to you, then it has to seem like a great idea that will benefit them. All the better if they think it was originally their idea and get to claim the credit.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#177

Post by wccrawford »

gnud wrote: post #152
bennysonething wrote: post #100

"world's most reviled software" Right, yeah, people hated Microsoft's software so much that they bought it by the bucket load. Also that comment about midway being problematic. Why is it problematic!? Did WW2 not happen? Who'd actually be offended?

> Also that comment about midway being problematic. It compares the "battle" between Sony and Microsoft to an actual war in which a lot of people died. It also sets up the XBox as some sort of patriotic push to defeat the agressors that attacked us without warning. I'd be offended if I was working for the PS2 division at Sony at the time, I think. I also think I'd be offended if I was working on games for the XBox -…

I wouldn't be offended, but I would be horrified. It's an awful comparison and one that I'd never make. I'd think poorly of anyone who discounts lives that easily.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#178

Post by matthewdgreen »

aparsons wrote: post #81
abvdasker wrote: post #2

> "There was a meeting in a small conference room with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. And Steve never, I don't think, ever thought it was a good idea. There's a story I've told where I was standing in line in the cafeteria with Kevin, and Steve Ballmer snuck up behind us and yelled in my ear, making me throw my food: 'YOU'RE GOING TO LOSE ALL OUR MONEY!'” Steve Ballmer might be the funniest dude ever to run a tech com…

Steve hated it. Bill hated what it turned out to be by 1999 (I left around then). Dave Cutler hated it. Eric Engstrom saw it more as a defensive strategy. Microsoft poured an incredible amount of talent and resources that would have gone towards the Web into Xbox.

Losing the web is forgivable in retrospect: the web is a very big place and MS still has a very respectable Internet business thanks to Azure. What they can't be forgiven for is their focus on winning the living room rather than investing in mobile. If PocketPC had followed the same consumer/developer-centric trajectory as XBox, I think the mobile world would look very different today.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#179

Post by lucideer »

grababner wrote: post #74

'He tells us: "Eventually somebody would come back to you with your idea – they would say, 'Hey, you know, this doesn't need Windows at all'. And you have to control your urge to fucking kill them, because you've been telling them that for two years and now they finally come up with it like it's their idea. But that's the Jedi mind trick." ' OMG. I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubb…

> I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubborn senior people with big egos.

Not disagreeing that corp envs are full of senior people with big egos, but this looks a little different from the opposite perspective.

Imagine you're a hypothetical "ideal" egoless senior corp person, and you have 20 people coming to you with their ideas. You know >51% of them are likely bad ideas (or at least it would be a bad idea to adopt most of them simultaneously). How can you tell which are worth adopting? If you trusted any of the suggesters absolutely they probably would've been promoted already, so it's difficult; you "stubbornly" reject most of them (probably some of the good ones too), or at the very least put them on the long finger for consideration later.

When you do get on board with an idea, yes there is still the problem of proper attribution and credit, and often there's non-benign human factors involved in muddying the waters there. But often ideas are Venn diagrams and defining them as atomic things from a single source isn't really practical.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#180

Post by macintux »

nitrogen wrote: post #83
macintux wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers to this point disagree, and I don't think you'll find a lot of support for your prediction of a change in direction. https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet...

You can't really use percentages to say that something has declined if the whole pie is growing, and web use is maybe the one thing that looks least favorable for desktops.

Ok, here are absolute numbers. PC sales look stagnant at best.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/263393/global-pc-shipmen...

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