Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gamesradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 242 posts

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

#41

Post by thanhhaimai »

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…

Eh, I don't post often, but I have to reply this. Please don't normalize that behavior. It's not funny. That's like a bully.

It's only acceptable for him to do that because of his position. Imagine a factory worker doing that to the CEO "just cause it's funny". That's the same with other funny-but-inappropriate behaviors we should discourage at work.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

spijdar wrote: post #29
est31 wrote: post #11

The Xbox operating system does base on Windows though. It's just locked down in some areas and lacks some higher level builtin programs of Windows and has a different launcher/DE. It's a half-lie at most. Also, the parts of Windows that Xbox does ship with are the most important ones for Microsoft shareholders. Nobody would want to edit their documents from their Xbox. That would in fact be harmful because some peopl…

It's a little more complicated than that. A lot of the code in the NT kernel running on XBox was written specifically for the console. The filesystem drivers, the TCP/IP stack, the HAL, and possibly other components were rewritten from scratch for XBox specifically. It wasn't just locked down, a significant portion of "Windows" was entirely missing, and a decent chunk was replaced with new, Windows-incompatible code.…

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.

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

#44

Post by npsomaratna »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #41
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…

Eh, I don't post often, but I have to reply this. Please don't normalize that behavior. It's not funny. That's like a bully. It's only acceptable for him to do that because of his position. Imagine a factory worker doing that to the CEO "just cause it's funny". That's the same with other funny-but-inappropriate behaviors we should discourage at work.

Exactly. I cringed when I read that. I'd never treat one of my employees that way (or allow an employee of mine to treat a subordinate that way).

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

#45

Post by rantwasp »

mi_lk wrote: post #27
rantwasp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah. I think Balmer did wonders for Ms. It’s really easy to blame the guy but I think it’s important to look at the context (of when he took over, what he actually did) also, he is the only CEO I routinely saw at the “corporate gym” in Redmond before the pandemic struck. No bodyguards, no nothings. Like a regular dude going to the gym, hanging out in the sauna/jacuzzi. He had a super positive attitude towards the sta…

Do you want to expand?

when Ballmer took over MS was right after the anti-trust fiasco. There was a time when people were not sure if the software giant was going to survive. They did under Ballmer.

From a sales pov, the company also grew and prospered. Microsoft had phenomenal growth while under Ballmer.

It's easy to remember all the things he botched (hello iphone?) but if you look at it objectively I think Ms did survive and prospered under Ballmer.

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

#46

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

klodolph wrote: post #17
est31 wrote: post #11

The Xbox operating system does base on Windows though. It's just locked down in some areas and lacks some higher level builtin programs of Windows and has a different launcher/DE. It's a half-lie at most. Also, the parts of Windows that Xbox does ship with are the most important ones for Microsoft shareholders. Nobody would want to edit their documents from their Xbox. That would in fact be harmful because some peopl…

I’ve had coworkers who were on the original Xbox team and they told me that the OS was not Windows. One of the things about the Xbox OS is that the OS itself gets a fixed timeslice each frame to do whatever it needs while the game is running, in order to make it so the game can get the rest of the frame to run. This sounds to me like a decision that has far-reaching consequences. I’m sure that it shares plenty code w…

By that standard, is a Hyper-V server running Windows? AFAIK, that's also just running NT as a guest.

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

#47

Post by warent »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #41
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…

Eh, I don't post often, but I have to reply this. Please don't normalize that behavior. It's not funny. That's like a bully. It's only acceptable for him to do that because of his position. Imagine a factory worker doing that to the CEO "just cause it's funny". That's the same with other funny-but-inappropriate behaviors we should discourage at work.

Context makes every difference here. I could very easily imagine some lower level employee doing this to a CEO and getting a laugh out of it. Context and relationship.

EDIT: not that im saying Steve was in the right, who knows what their relationship was like

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

#48

Post by rantwasp »

nailer wrote: post #18
rantwasp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah. I think Balmer did wonders for Ms. It’s really easy to blame the guy but I think it’s important to look at the context (of when he took over, what he actually did) also, he is the only CEO I routinely saw at the “corporate gym” in Redmond before the pandemic struck. No bodyguards, no nothings. Like a regular dude going to the gym, hanging out in the sauna/jacuzzi. He had a super positive attitude towards the sta…

When he started Microsoft had the most popular OS, web browser and mobile OS. A decade later they lost all three and their market cap barely moved.

one could argue that Windows is the most popular consumer OS even today (keep in mind the HN is not representative for what people normally run).

Also, a decade later, Microsoft is experiencing a software renaissance, in part, due to the the work Ballmer setup. One example: Azure. In the cloud space there are 2 gorillas: AWS and Azure (everything else is vaporware and at this point I don't think it would be wise to bet the farm on GCP or ... Oracle). How did Azure get here? Do you think they decided to do cloud and it happened magically?

Another example: the XBOX. I personally will never but a PS, and I believe XBOX is awesome in this space.

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

#49

Post by phire »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #43
spijdar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more complicated than that. A lot of the code in the NT kernel running on XBox was written specifically for the console. The filesystem drivers, the TCP/IP stack, the HAL, and possibly other components were rewritten from scratch for XBox specifically. It wasn't just locked down, a significant portion of "Windows" was entirely missing, and a decent chunk was replaced with new, Windows-incompatible code.…

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.

MinWin is arguably the windows kernel without most of the userspace. Though it's still massive and contains a lot of userspace: 25MB on disk, 40MB in memory.

The xbox kernel has absolutely no connection, it forked off at a completely different point and was hacked and slashed until it fits into just 256KB.

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

#50

Post by ErikAugust »

KMag wrote: post #38
flavmartins wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn’t. You like the pay but hate the person. Many of us have been there before. You eventually get fed up and have to move on.

I used to think I would do pretty much anything I didn't find immoral for a million dollars per year. An abusive boss for 80+ hours per week changed my mind. When I quit my third job, my boss told me "Karl, I know you hate me now, but in a couple years, you'll be making a million dollars a year and love me." My response "Even if I believed you, I wouldn't do this job for a million dollars".

Let me guess: You wouldn’t have ended up making a million dollars a year.
Post reply on HN