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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

#201

Post by LanceH »

mattnewton wrote: post #187
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's super-easy to believe, barely an inconvenience. Wikipedia tells me 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Midway. [1] If I gloss over the fact that they were soldiers and not civilians, and ignore the injuries, in terms of one-day death toll, it's the same as 9/11. Sure, the Japanese military was the aggressor in WWII, but it seems rude to mention 3,000 human deaths for a cheap "take that!" I mea…

> As an optional fun fact, Midway Games was probably using the same allegory when they picked their name. Really? I always thought this was because they were founded in Chicago, near Midway airport. (The airport itself was named after the battle though). Midway games got started in video games licensing games from japanese companies Taito and Namco, so I never thought about an adversarial explaination of the name.

The midway is the line of games at the fair. I've always assumed it had something to do with that.

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

#202

Post by Bakary »

aparsons wrote: post #78

> "You'd have to sit in a meeting with Bill, and he's frighteningly brilliant. People throw around the word 'genius' all the time, and the way people say 'genius' is not accurate if you've met somebody who is a genius – somebody who, when you meet them, it seems like aliens are whispering in their ear because there's no way they could know these things otherwise. This is a different kind of a thing, and Bill's like t…

I understand that we are looking at this from a position of strong bias, having the technology in front of us already. But surely smart engineers in that sector would be well aware of how easily science-fiction can turn into reality, having witnessed half a century of astounding developments? Did no one really take Bill's predictions that seriously at the time?

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

#203

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

monocasa wrote: post #75
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reading of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin was that it was more like an embedded device that does in fact use Linux as the kernel but throws out the userspace and runs busybox + custom code, or even further like https://gokrazy.org/ - at which point it is Linux, but ... I mean, there's a reason why people don't think of Android as being a Linux system.

It's way less Windows than Android is Linux. They took out the idea of processes for instance. A single executable runs at a time, and it's dynamically linked against the kernel and running in kernel space. There are no system calls instructions used, just normal call instructions that get fixed up on load. USB, network, and graphics stacks all live in the executable, not the kernel provided by the box (despite every…

Oh, it's a NT-shaped unikernel. That's actually pretty neat:)

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

#204

Post by dagmx »

seer wrote: post #156
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 way I see it, you are just a single data point to the senior people. You mention something, they hear it from a couple of other places and they are now convinced that its a good path forward. You can put your black hat and game this by making sure you suggest whatever you’re after to more people/sources of info that your target listens to. Bonus points for going through intermediaries that obscure the source of t…

I've learned the best way to get ideas going in a corporate settings are:

- pitch the idea to as many folks as possible. Not just to the ones who are going to okay it. Even if only a small portion of each idea resonates with each person, you now have them all slightly on board, which is all you need to get a foot in the door. The more people on board, the more you can back yourself up with to get the okay

- do proof of concepts yourself. I always carve out some time to implement a MVP of my ideas, and then use that to hook people.

- make a design doc. I hate doing this personally, but a lot of people respond well to the idea of one, even if most won't read it. It's just the idea that it's well thought out, even if the design doc is mostly fluff and will change dramatically. People love procedural work.

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

#205

Post by some_random »

distances wrote: post #194
some_random wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world doesn't think like that, and referring to a major battle the US won in what is probably the single most justified war in US history as "problematic" make you sound like a nazi. Edit: specifically the line "referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese."

Using such a term when your direct competitors are Japanese will evoke some mental imagery. Very, very tasteless in my humble opinion.

You're right that it's distasteful, but it's not _problematic_. Certainly not because 3,000 Imperial Japanese serviceman lost their lives furthering their nation's colonial ambitions.

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

#206

Post by Inhibit »

valuearb wrote: post #192
grzm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? I'd say any connection iOS has with NextStep is through OS X. What connection does iOS have to NextStep that is independent of OS X parentage?

I was being sarcastic, iOS is clearly based on MacOS/OSX, which was derived from NextStep. OP was implying that was a myth.

Still with a BSD derived kernel? I can't see why you'd need to make them that different; massive costs savings if you don't.

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

#207

Post by thekyle »

pjmlp wrote: post #148
nailer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular consumer OS is Android. Arguing anything else goes against all known stats. Microsoft's renaissance is mainly due to Nadella focusing on software and services instead of selling Windows. You mentioned Xbox as a way to support Ballmer. The Xbox story mentioned in the article does not support Ballmer. Agreed re Azure but I don't know if Ballmer was still focusing on Windows for Azure, which seems likel…

Try to do Office documents for school work on Android.

Office has a native version for Android with apparently over a hundred million downloads.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

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

#208

Post by Gravityloss »

kortilla wrote: post #153
saurik wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your goal is to change the world--incepting some politician to change their position or some businessperson to alter their product--that makes a lot of sense... if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this? I can't imagine it would help your career any... shouldn't you be spending all of that effort finding a less toxic place to work?

> if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this? Because there can be massive monetary rewards for it? (Sorry if that’s the obvious answer we’re all pretending isn’t there.) We’re talking about the Xbox project, where one of the leaders is so rich he pays people to help him cook ancient Egyptian bread for something to do.

But why would a manager reward someone with only bad and/or non-original ideas?

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

#209

Post by rantwasp »

thekyle wrote: post #207
pjmlp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to do Office documents for school work on Android.

Office has a native version for Android with apparently over a hundred million downloads. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

huh? ms making money on android. shocker

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

#210

Post by pjmlp »

thekyle wrote: post #207
pjmlp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to do Office documents for school work on Android.

Office has a native version for Android with apparently over a hundred million downloads. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

The point wasn't that it isn't available, and indeed lots of people use it to read documents.

The point was about actually working on documents with a proper level of quality that aspires to good evaluations.

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