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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

#221

Post by monocasa »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #203
monocasa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:)

Yeah, in a lot of ways RTOSes in general are unikernels, and the concept is wayyyy older than the webdev side of the industry gives credit for.

They even derive from the same sorta lineage with the ancient SABRE (now z/TPF) being both the first major API server and the first major real time OS.

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

#222

Post by edgyquant »

pjmlp wrote: post #149
edgyquant wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Yes mobile moved the market by capturing hundreds of millions of people who would never have owned a computer otherwise, and Microsoft failed to react to this. 2) Do you have any data to back up the claim that mobile usage leads to desktop purchases? I have never heard such a claim before

Given that I see more Windows laptops and 2-1 devices than Android tablets around here, Microsoft has reacted quite well to this. Additionally given the amount of people that run Office on their phones, in spite of total lack of usability to do such kind of work on those devices, again very good reaction.

The first point is anecdotal at best, the second point is moot since were talking about operating systems.

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

#223

Post by danbolt »

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…

I think a lot of Xbox products and services are meant to funnel into Azure or other cloud services these days.

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

#224

Post by cwyers »

dang wrote: post #99
cwyers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you change the title too, then, please? The new URL talks about this, but as part of a larger conversation.

The thread already crystallized around the previous article/title, so I compromised by taking a phrase from the subtitle of this one.

Okay, thanks for the explanation.

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

#225

Post by winston_smith »

bergstromm466 wrote: post #185
mypalmike wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not toxicity though - it's human psychology. The classic book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" even mentions this strategy when discussing winning people over to your ideas. People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher…

> "How To Win Friends And Influence People" "This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about…

Advice nudges people in a direction. Carnegie's advice is good for nudging people in the direction of being less self centered. For people pleasers who don't think of themselves enough, it is bad advice. For people too wrapped up in themselves, it is good advice.

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

#226

Post by pjmlp »

edgyquant wrote: post #222
pjmlp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that I see more Windows laptops and 2-1 devices than Android tablets around here, Microsoft has reacted quite well to this. Additionally given the amount of people that run Office on their phones, in spite of total lack of usability to do such kind of work on those devices, again very good reaction.

The first point is anecdotal at best, the second point is moot since were talking about operating systems.

The anecdote is quite visible on any European shopping mall.

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

#227

Post by ficklepickle »

lucideer wrote: post #179
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…

Found the manager

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

#228

Post by thekyle »

pjmlp wrote: post #210
thekyle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What features of Microsoft Office do you think are missing on mobile that a typical student would be required to use in school?

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

#229

Post by macintux »

krisroadruck wrote: post #216
macintux wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, here are absolute numbers. PC sales look stagnant at best. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263393/global-pc-shipmen...

That's a tale of saturation. Toaster sales are probably relatively flat as well. Not because toaster use has declined but because people already have a toaster that meets their toasting needs. PC improvements have slowed to a crawl over the past decade in terms of real-world performance gains for the average consumer. Their 5 year old rig still manages to surf the web, stream videos, play games and send emails just f…

Well, smartphone sales have saturated at 1.5 billion while PC sales are around 75 million.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone...

The original proposition was that desktop sales would rise with mobile sales (with a lag time), and that's clearly not the case to this point, and there are no indicators that will ever be true.

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

#230

Post by sneak »

gavanwilhite wrote: post #110
avalys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because "character flaws" on a personal level are often required to achieve exceptional results. Not sufficient. But often required. If Jobs were a quiet, contemplative, respectful person who was careful to keep track of where he heard what idea and assign credit where credit was due - it's unlikely we'd have Apple. That's just a different personality type.

I believe this is the wrong way to think about this. Character flaws are often associated with certain effective traits, but are not chained to them. In your example, one can be vocal, biased-twoards-action, and low-bullshit, while also giving credit where credit is due. I think it’s far from obvious that Jobs would have been a less effective leader if he had addressed his character shortcomings. I similarly feel the…

Yeah, for some reason we as a society really dig the whole "good with the bad", "beauty and the beast" style narrative. As if people can't be that good without also being that bad.

It's an extremely old meme, and it will take a long long time to die.

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