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Microsoft's Technical Glitches at CES Explained
Thomas Hawk writes "Sean Alexander is one of the guys on the Media Center Team at Microsoft who was involved in the CES presentation with Bill Gates. Sean also runs a very interesting blog called Addicted to Digital Media. Gates and Microsoft have taken a lot of heat over the course of the last two days for the technical glitches in Microsoft's presentation at CES. Sean offers us the rare glimpse on why the glitches happened and what it's like to be backstage at the big Microsoft presentation at CES. Very good follow up on Sean's part." Update: 01/08 19:03 GMT by T : Hawk writes with a static link to Alexander's story.
Seems to be running his blog on the same machine as they used at the CES presentation.
The explanation we were all waiting for! Bill Gates' demo failed because...
:)
"Service Unavailable"
That makes it all clear in just 2 short words! Great summary
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Remember that video that was floating around of Win98 blue-screening during a presentation? Good times.
Poor Sean Alexander HAD to have gotten the Donald treatment with a big YOUR FIRED after that flub up... id put 10 bucks on it
...and it should be known by now
[Disclaimer: the following comments are my own based on my own perception of events. Provided as-is and confers no rights]
:)
:)
Wow, things have been so busy here at CES that I'm just getting around to blogging, starting with my promised behind the scenes of the Bill Gates CES 2005 Keynote. I've done a short version and a long version for those who have been emailing, asking me to follow up on my earlier post.
Summary
Wednesday night, Bill Gates hosted the 2005 CES Opening Keynote along with his surprise guest, Late Night's Conan O'Brien. Overall I think things went well, but as can happen with live events with so many variables, there were a couple of technical issues noted by sites like Engadget. The key thing for me that I could have done a better job on-stage pointing out is that despitea small glitch with a remotecontrol (IR) receiver, a single Media Center ran all theMedia Center demos andwe kept rolling despitethe hiccup. According to the postmortem, it appears a 2nd IR receiverrun over to Bill's seat failed, so the Media Center never got the signal. It could have been all the IR interference in the venue- cameras and plasma displays and lights, or the powered USB booster - a piece of equipment that gets a USB signal over a long-stretch. The production team also handled a small power outage exceptionally well in the minutes leading up which might have contributed. These things happen and the team pulled it out despite some obstacles out of their control.
Below is my account of what was happening back stage.
Rehearsals
Setup and runthroughs went great the day before and day of.We did about a half-dozen individual runthroughs and 3-4 end to end runthroughs. Everything was running great except for an intermittent Internet bandwidth issue. We replaced a router and that appeared to solve part of the problem but bandwidth continued to be intermittent as I noted in my previous entry.
15 Minutes Till Showtime: Makeup
Yes, we had to wear makeup. I sat in a chair next to Conan and we discussed our Irish roots and he was cracking jokes. The night before, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have dinner with Conan and a few folks from his Late Night team at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel. What a great guy, a great storyteller and super-funny. I can see why he's been announced as the next host of The Tonight Show when Jay steps down.
Showtime!
For the account below, here are my own thoughts and the timing is approximate thanks to Engadget
6:30pm - Everyone is charged up and ready to go. Gary Shapiro, President of the CEA (host of CES)is getting ready to go on-stage. But firsta little background - in order to drive the slides and overall production coordination, a sort of "Mission Control" is set up backstage to drive the technical systems - slides, prompters, timers etc. We're settling in for Conan's monologue when two electrical engineerswalk behind themain operations tables to check a piece of equipment. From my vantage point, one the UPSes (Uninterruptable Power Supplies) has been triggered and they're troubleshooting.
6:31pm - Everything is still running- troubleshootingis going onin the dark with flashlights, more engineers and members of the production crew are working methodically, as the UPS is running down, tracing connections, circuits. I'm standing clear w/ my team going over what I want to say. I find out later the presentation systems are all on the same UPS- slides moved to backup and systems are being powered down.
6:40pm - The UPS is going. The Xboxes for the Forza Racing game sneak preview demos (which we had back stage due to space restrictions on stage) lost power. It appears the main demo systems on-stage weren't affected except for Xbox from what I can tell. Their bringing their demosback up.
6:41pm - Keynote starts. We're looking good- the power circuit is back but the production team decidesto continue on backup PPT cuing systems as best I can tell. The show must go on.
Click here to view a streaming video. It shows Conan O'Brien easing the tension with his classic humor as Bill Gates encountered problems with his remote control while demoing the Windows Media Center.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://mirrordot.org/stories/5aee263e631cd510f6540 3b6904151fa/index.html
Gotta say that approx 40% of MS demos during presentations I attended at the forum above failed to work 100%. Was a little disappointed in that.
Anybody grab the text? Slashdotted w/ only 8 comments on the story.
Perhaps this will change your mind: AMD and Linux: Reaching for the 64-bit Trophy
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/5aee263e631cd510f 65403b6904151fa/index.html
It must've been all the extra IR interference, because everyone knows that MS products always work flawlessly.
But Netcraft (and "What's that site running?") goes a long way to explaining why!
blog.seanalexander.com Windows 2000
This is interesting. If I hit it in Mozilla, I immediately get service unavailable. If, however, I just telnet in, I get the page after a few minutes of waiting.
Well, try again and I don't:
mdchaney@fractal:~/taxi$ telnet blog.seanalexander.com 80
Trying 66.226.14.131...
Connected to blog.seanalexander.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: blog.seanalexander.com
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 14:49:42 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 28
Service UnavailableConnection closed by foreign host.
Do you have ESP?
Has anybody ever seen an OSX box crap out on Steve? I have not heard of this or seen it.
Hmmmm.
Good excuses are still just good excuses.
JsD
Oh man what a troll. Do you even check your 'facts'?
1) There IS 64 bit Linux. (e.g. RedHat Enterprise 3 64 bit version)
2) The analog to a start menu was in the first Apple Mac GUIs, WAY before Windows.
3) Popup blockers have been around a LONG time in mozilla/firefox etc. IE has just finally got a very poor implementation of it.
4) 3 button mice were on many Unix Workstations as standard at least 15 years ago, At that time you couldn't even buy a 3 button windows mouse. Middle mouse button usage is stil far better integrated into the X window/Unix/Linux world than Windows.
Things would have gone better otherwise.
Left behind, eh? http://www.windows-longhorn.org/ for details on being left behind.
to see BG's machine craps out when he needs it the most just like mine does when I do.
Unfortunately for me, I don't have anyone to fire.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Seem Sean must be running Media Center to host his blogs.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
The most interesting part of this story is that Alexander still has all his fingers left to type a report on the debacle.
The other most interesting part of this whole story is that the rest of us don't have Alexander, the MS Media Center Team, or the Windows source code. So when we get the BSoD, we're left scratching our heads. That's why we use Linux: with Open Source, we're as privileged as Bill Gates, to whom Windows is Open Source, because he's got the keys to the vault. His CES debacle should open everyone's eyes to the difference. Especially the "communists" in the global IT community who'd rather not spend more on Gates' closed source, and get less - and get hung out to dry with a crashed Windows app thousands of times a day, around the world.
--
make install -not war
Oh man what a troll.
a) Good observation
Do you even check your 'facts'?
b) Did you check your first sentence?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed, he'd be... oh wait never mind
"Service Unavailable TM" is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Copyright 2004-2005. Other registered marks that Slashdotters may not use without appropriate attribution include:
Please see the Microsoft Trademarks website for additional details.
Excellent troll. You brought the zealots out in force.
Perhaps the enjoyment of poking fun at M$ would be noticably reduced by taking note of the fact that the demos on the Media Center at CES actually worked...or did you all forget to read the full blog article?
/. account and I'm too cowardly to create one - sue me)
(Yeah, so I don't have a
You seem to be implying that MS is this major innovative force in the industry. I hate to break it to you, but Apple does a lot more engineering work/innovation than MS does.
... doesn't this "digital hub for your digital (i)Life" stuff sound familiar? Sigh, copycats... and bad at it too! Shame though that people will buy this crap en masse and still sneer at the poor Apple-ite... I'm worried though; today people have Office because it's the "stadrard" for business, bla, bla... tomorrow, will we all have to own "Home" to watch the DRMd pics & vids of the latest addition to the family?
;-)
The only good thing is the fun granted by future worms spilling true amateur porn over the net. You see a hot chick across the street? p2p to check if she's worth the effort
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
fwiw: I got into the page after 15 tries, myself.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
show me one place where Apple has been more "innovative" in creating something that hadn't existed before?
The only thing i can think of was the apple newton - but even then there were others with similar products.
.. there should be no glitches, security holes, blue screens or rebooting on every patch.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
The third time I post this comment, but here goes (worth the download):
Torrent of the entire show on my blog.
The problem was with the IR receiver; a hardware failure, not a software crash. Read the article before you start saying how everyone gets "hung out to dry with a crashed Windows app thousands of times a day" because "rest of us don't have Alexander, the MS Media Center Team, or the Windows source code". You might discover that it doesn't further your communist agenda after all.
Granted this XP was not using Windows 3.11, but good old MS Dos, Display Write (old word processor) and a few other very simple games.
But agree with everything else..
you talk about "middle mouse button" .. does your box even recognize more than 2 button mice? more than 3? seriously, the overall lack of drivers and peripheral support, combined with some pretty major bugs (multiple installs of mine failed to run notepad, outlook express, windows media player, windowsupdate, etc).
I dont generally feed trolls, i'm more posting this as a commentary to anyone who is considered building a 64bit windows box.. perhaps you would like to read about my experiences with WinXP64 beta.
Explaining what went wrong in the demo, and how environmental factors contributed to the glitch/crash, misses the point that the audience so obviously got:
Microsoft products have problems with crashing. Everyone who uses them knows that. Conan knows that. Bill knows that.
The amusement factor is that even the leader of the company knows that and experiences it in the most sensitive moments.
If you need software to run critical proceses in a nuke plant or an airplane, would you use Microsoft products?
Apple isn't known for being innovative in bringing NEW technologies - they're inovative in refigning existing technologies. Kind of like BASF "we don't make the products, we make them better"
Yes because ADB, META Files, HPFS, IWM, just to name a few. were all ripped off from someone else.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
All year I read about how Bill Gates is the wealthiest, most successful businessman in the world. I don't want to hear about internet access challenges when you are showing off technology that uses the internet. At that point in the keynote I began to wonder why is Microsoft even at the show (nevermind the keynote address)? Shouldn't the keynote be given by a person from Sony/Apple or some other vender that can deliver reliable hardware and software?
The Forza Motorsport demo should have been a slam dunk. Who wants their console gaming experience to be more like a pc experience? With the Xbox Microsoft is introducing unreliability in the gaming console market. Bravo.
They should only have a small booth in the back of CES in my opinion.
So now I'm in the asshat category for trying to explain [the joke]...oh well.
:)
Don't worry dude, it's not the only reason!
FireWire (IEEE1394)
a hot swappable power carrying serial bus (I'm referring to ADB, which is what USB is essentially a newer implementation of)
...any Slashdotters will be convinced. Afterall, we are talking about Microsoft, one of the richest companies anywhere!
Troll?
The parents parent says, 'we're not particularly competent at what we do', the parent takes note of this.
In my other life I do tech for a local community theatre group. Folks, anything can happen during a live performance. No matter how much you might prepare, stuff happens, and it happens in front of everybody. Power can fail, body mikes can break, lamps burn out, RFI can wreak havoc. You can't prepare for every eventuality, but you can handle the situation with grace.
It sounds to me like the Microsofties did fine.
Is this news meant to bring down the blog site? because i think it went down! /.ted!
http://blog.seanalexander.com/PermaLink,guid,586ba c82-e272-44f7-a439-a3d1e6176aef.aspx
it says "Service unavailable" when I visited it.
Just go to mirrordot.org
Say what you will about Microsoft but I think it's really great the amount of communication that they are sharing with the public through blogs and posts like this. I think that to work somewhere where you can post a blog entry about technical glitches at CES and not get fired is pretty cool. Microsoft's most famous blogger, Robert Scoble, is often offering up posts that many might find to have "anti Microsoft" tones and he can do so without fear of losing his job. Sometimes criticism, even self criticism, can be a good thing and allows us all to improve. What impressed me the most about Sean's post is that it was allowed to happen at all. It adds a very human element to Microsoft and opens up a way for Microsoft and the public to directly communicate. I think the tollerance that Microsoft has and the willingness to be open about problems and issues with their software is refreshing and will make the company and the software that much better in the long run. Kudos to Sean and his team. They did a great job and pulled off a great recovery in one of those awkward technical moments that we've all been through ourselves in the past.
In conferences, it's more likely to be the focus bracketing IR beams on cameras. These can cause havoc as they spread over a wide area - a high-end SLR may have as many as 7 or 15 beams used to determine focal distance. If you have an IR viewer you can get some really neat pictures in conferences as people snap away - hundreds of beams lancing all over the place as the autofocus kicks in.
While I would say that they should have anticipated this, the actual risks wouldn't have been easy to test or replicate beforehand - you'd pretty much need a room of random model cameras snapping away while you tried your remote. In most cases, I'd go for a wired remote over anything else - remember a conference is a concentrated gathering of devices you can't control, rendering Bluetooth, WiFi and IR risky at best.
Having said all that, the continuous outage looks more to be a kit failure (as mentioned in the article) - an autofocus would give you a split second blast of IR which would cause a momentary glitch.
Whatever happened to running rigged demos for trade shows? Heck, Bill ran a rigged demo _during_ the antitrust case _in_court_. Are we to believe that they have forgotten how to do a rigged demo in recent years? Why would they put themselves through all this ridicule?
I know a salesman that tells a story of running a rigged demo every 45 minutes for 2 days straight during a trade show in order to sell pharmacists on the idea of getting a computer system. It's not all that uncommon a thing to do.
Sure, media center is a little complicated to rig a demo for, but it's a lot easier than putting up with the aftermath of 3 BSoDs. I'd rather have something approaching a slide show than have Conan O'Brien make fun of me. (too bad they don't have any rich-media slideshow software to write this in, like Hypercard or something)
But that's their problem. I really don't care. Any "media" PC that has DRM is something I don't care to buy. If it comes to not being able to buy some movie or whatever that won't run without DRM telling on me when I do so, I'll just pop in a VHS tape or a commercial-stripped DVD and enjoy myself anyway.
Windows is crap, no surprise there.
But what I want to know is why you can walk around the show floor at LinuxWorld in the morning, before it's open to the public, and see so many Windows logos on the big projection screens they use for presentations. This always boggles my mind.
From the macobserver article:
"The most disturbing report was that Steve Jobs, after his Mac OS X Server demonstration went awry, was obviously angry, cut his speech short, and left the stage so abruptly, that when the demo began working, he was long gone."
I've said this before many times... Apple isn't innovative, they are an early adopter. With a good track history of picking the right things to adopt.
Apple was the early adopter in the GUI/mouse controlled interface, 32-bit systems, 24-bit color displays, laser printing, powered serial bus, CD-ROM in every system, the sacking of the floppy, Combo driver (DVD read/CD writer) in every system, network capability in every system, 64-bit systems...
In none of these cases did Apple invent the technology, nor were they the first to market. In all cases Apple implemented the technology in their systems well before the technology/ideas started to be implemented elsewhere in the PC industry.
Firewire, man, sheesh, how can you forget that one? At least name one that actually gets used on non-Apple machines!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This is directed toward Sean. Great explanation of the events leading up to the hiccups. All-in-all, it sounds like you guys did a bang up job. I'm a bit curious, however: Roughly how long was that USB extension, and how much did the USB repeater cost? I've been a bit interested in that. And, as said above, cell phone fan is being, at a minimum, unduly harsh. I could almost understand a post like that if the reason for a failure was "we forgot to test" or "the media center PC had spyware". It was a live show. I've done live shows and demos, I've taught multiple classes, and I know how things love to go wrong. (Ugh... that senior citizen's MS Office class.... bad memories...) None the less, it sounds like you and your team handled it gracefully, with a witty ad-lib recovery (which, I might add, was appropriate because of Conan's presence). And right now, you're doing what Microsoft as a whole should be doing: being open and transparent, and explaining everything that could get wrong.
Imagine that. I wonder if they have contacted their hardware vendor.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Whatever the reasons why the presentation failed in this particular case, in general it is a bad idea to use non-wired technologies for important presentations where reliability needs to be assured.
Infrared and bluetooth and wifi are great for use at home where the environment is stable and controlled, but in a major international event like CES, the conditions are exactly the opposite. If one could see in the IR band, I bet the CES stage would have appeared swamped in a blizzard of unwanted IR confetti from numerous sources.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Sure, the BSoD onstage was the IR receiver taking over Windows in a unique, unexpected way... nope. Windows is so unstable that an IR receiver can take down the kernel? That's a serious flaw in Windows.
Fuck you, fascist, with your insane "commie" talk, to a person richer, smarter, and with more Windows programming experience than you. Microslave.
--
make install -not war
$ telnet blog.seanalexander.com 25
Trying 66.226.14.131...
Connected to blog.seanalexander.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 dedi312 Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.211 ready at Sat, 8 Jan 2005 08:00:47 -0800
(I didn't feel like checking to see if it was also an open relay, that would just have completely topped it)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...can I dual boot my favorite Linux distro, SuSE?
I went to college with this guy, Sean Alexander. His nickname was "Bubble Boy". Funny to see where people end up...
Being Head drone of an evil empire is not success in my point of view.
At least Vader eventually overcomes the evil that controls him.
Money and power are not success. They help, they are necessary, but they do not equal success.
Hee hee, this will be a great discussion! Our favorite operating system would have never done this! Even if it did, it would be a hardware glitch, and not the actual fault of the OS. Microsoft doesn't have that luxury, however, because they made lots of money and weren't always nice! I'm so bitter about them I write "M$" as an abbreviation, isn't it clever?!
Oh, did you want to know if I would use their software?
I click on the link and get "Service Unavailable". Both humourous and typical given this discusses the presentation crashing.
Firewire, man, sheesh, how can you forget that one? At least name one that actually gets used on non-Apple machines!
I didn't. Firewire should be considered a descendant of ADB.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
This is not a defense for MS or BG, just a straight wake-upper for the zealots out there leaning any way (read: my opinion). First, remember computing before Windows. Remember DOS. Second, remember how Windows opened up third party options. And lastly, remember how welcoming each and every third party vendor into Windows is also an invitation for Murphy. I like Windows, Mac, open source. My world is a better world because of all of them. We can't change the past, and we can't erase BG's role in it, much as we'd like to shape history to each and everyone's preference. So the man looked like a fool. Big deal. Raise your hand if you've never looked like one or if you swear you never will.
Left behind, eh? http://www.windows-longhorn.org/ for details on being left behind. [ Reply to This ]
Interesting to see netcraft.com says the site is running...
"http://www.windows-longhorn.org was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 8-Jan-2005 16:15:53 GMT "
That absolutely never happened, but sounds like the kind of FUD that Linsux users and /. is known for spreading. Rather than posting any stupid story that you might have heard, please cite a credible reference.
> Sure, the BSoD onstage was the IR receiver taking over Windows
:) (FYI, I left Microsoft four years ago, but I am sure most of the smart people I knew there still are) Oh, this is rich! Now wait, weren't we supposed to be criticising Windows here? Even if I were the Devil himself, Bill's problems would still have been with the IR receiver.
If you had read the article, you'd know that there was no BSoD. The presentation simply did not respond to Bill's remote control; it happened because the IR receiver at his seat malfunctioned. It could have been a hardware failure or interference from the environment. If Bill were using OpenOffice on Linux, the exact same thing would have happened, so your bashing is quite unfair.
> Fuck you, fascist, with your insane "commie" talk
Why is it that most Open Source advocates are so foul-mouthed? Calling the "Open Source" philosophy "communist" is not insane, but rather accurate. Communism is based on the "from each by ability, to each by his need" idea, and free software is simply a direct application of this idea. According to Stallman, each programmer should work on software for his own personal enjoyment and give it to the community. Then the community will pay him back with modifications and the rich people will pay him money, generously satisfying all his needs because he's just such a great and unselfish fellow.
> to a person richer, smarter, and with more Windows
> programming experience than you. Microslave.
Ha, ha, ha! Even calling me a Microsoft employee as a final insult
Boy, read up on your PC history. You're one perfect example of what I meant when I used the word zealot.
When I was at Apple, if you were doing a demo in front of a large group and something crashed, the cry would come up from the audience "push-ups, push-ups!" with the presenter supposed to do push-ups on stage until the demo got fixed by the rest of the crew.
The best demo ever, though, was when the QuickTime crew was demoing some new stuff on Mac OS 7. They're going along, and suddenly the screen jumps into MacsBug (the old low-level debugger - this was what you got instead of the bomb screen if you had MacsBug installed). We all start yelling "push-ups, push-ups" and the presenter goes "Well, let's see if we can look a little deeper into this" and clicks the mouse. The MacsBug screen peels off and we get this video of guys banging around with hammers inside the machine. What a great setup.
> Your brain is not getting the message that the OS
:)
> needs to be stable enough to handle changes like that.
Changes like what?
> What happens to the thousands of home users
Nothing much. The thousands of home users don't get blue screens on a regular basis. In fact it's been many years since I've seen one. I've had many other problems with Windows, but they were usually caused by misconfiguration and were easily fixable after a brief Google search. I should say at this point that configuration problems are far more common on Linux and their solutions tend to be considerably more complicated and hard to find.
> It's not acceptable to peddle something that fragile to unsophisticated
> users who just want to watch their movie in their darkened living room.
Such users usually buy a DVD player. Only hardcore geeks have computer projection systems to watch movies. And as for fragility, most software is anyway. Linux software is just as fragile and can easily be made completely unusable with a misplaced # in the configuration file.
> Especially when they will *have* to use that
> piece of crap, because their movie is sold with
> DRM forcing them to play it on a Microsoft rig.
I don't know about you, but I've never seen a DVD player "crash". Most problems with consumer electronics come from people not knowing how to use them. (I would say "too dumb to figure 'em out", but I really shouldn't, since my mother is one of them
Why in the name of Zeus's bunghole were they using an IR-based remote system? That doesn't make any sense when IR devices require almost line of sight and boosters and repeaters, etc. in order to function properly. Whoever was in charge of designing the demo logistics should be fired for being an idiot and not using an RF-based system that has longer range and does not require line of sight. Hell, I've got one I'll donate to the bonehead (Bill Gates)!
Let's see. We're up to version 6.X of IE. Safari is only at version 1.2.4 and Firefox is only at version 1.0. Yet both are far superior products to IE. This is just an example, but it's pretty much par for the course regarding anything MS. Regardless, MS drones' rationalizations will continue. Yeah, let's blame it on the hardware. Typical MS BS.
Karma Schmarma
> I don't think this is FC3's fault here; sounds like you're
> missing some config detail that is keeping you from connecting.
Well, of course it is! "Missing some config detail" is what pretty much all Linux problems come down to. And it's really sad that Linux programmers still have not figured out how to default sensibly (for a desktop user, not a server guru) nor how to write options dialogs. So all Linux programs have their ugly text configuration files which require hundreds of manual pages to describe every possible configuration option without giving a single example of what should be the most common setup (a home user on a personal desktop).
we build crap.
Need a longer explanation? we build overpriced crap.
auf deutsche? wir machen sheize.
Translated by Microsoft's marketing spin doctors? Our asses innovate.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Not that I'm a fan boy of M$ (never.. uh "owned" a MS product), but show me one distro/setup of *nix that comes close to doing what Media Center can do... out of the box with Joe SP plugging it in. Not to mention the fact that I bet my left test that not a one of you can honestly say that you've never had an "o sh*t" moment during a presentation.
When I get flamed, I have no compunctions about flaming back. I'm glad that I outed you as a former MS employee, when I really was just insulting your slavery to the MS Way - topnotch marketing spin in defense of the monopoly built on crappy software. Who knew that you actually produced that crappy software? Talk about rich. I hope *you* are, because otherwise you're just selling your developer soul to the beast for nothing. To complete the picture of a MS certified programming lightweight, you don't even know that the only universal language among programmers is "profanity". Which is no surprise, when you don't even realize that Stallman, who actually *is* a communist, doesn't speak for all of us in the commercial, yet open, software biz. Calling me a communist gets you a "fuck you" on Slashdot, and worse in person, should you be so unwise to test it. Here's a clue: since MS source code is as open within an MS corporate project as is any GNU code to anyone, does that make the MS Redmond campus some kind of "commune", and Gates a Lenin with (bad) hair? Of course not. So drop the obnxoius "communist" rhetoric that betrays your fascist attitude. Plenty of capitalists like me are secure enough in our own powers that we prefer open source to make our money, rather than the monopoly fascism that you're defending from your ex-boss. Send Alexander's postmortem spin to the home users left hanging when they're just trying to watch a movie that requires Bill's latest monopoly gristle, and they were foolish enough to unplug the remote without a Media Center Team support crew standing by to explain to their date.
--
make install -not war
If i remember correctly...and I do, the Half Life 2 demo at E3 kept crashing and look how that turned out. Of course since this is Microsoft everyone will blow the situation out of proportion.
You obviously have no idea how the PC and Windows came about. Have you ever seen a DOS screen and that's all you have?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Is there a full video somewhere? It would be nice to see it from start to finish...
THERE WAS NO BSOD YOU FAGOTS. WHY IS THIS MORON BEING MODDED UP FOR POSTING DRIVEL? THE ONLY INSIGHT HE HAS IS THE SIGHT IN HIS ASS WHICH IS WHERE HIS HEAD IS STUCK. AND THE MODS FOLLOW THE MICROS^H$OFT BASHER JUST TO BE COOL. DO YOU EVEN READ THE POSTS YOU BLINDLY MODERATE?
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I have been a regular reader of slashdot for years but these instant reactions to anything MS are just plain childish and ill-considered (or is this the issue, slashdots become full of kids/immature adults who rarely have a considered view?).
... less used, hence complex and never crashed!
I can remember the schoolyard, "look he's wearing reebok!", "Hey, shitty trainers" etc. Eventually people grow up and realise a pair of trainers are just a pair of trainers, thats all. If you're serious about a sport though you'd get a pair that were suitable to it, you following this?
MS has its place (btw its ahead of the rest IMHO!), but its just an OS, an OS which my parents can use easily. To be honest they would rather have an OS which was simple but broke down occasionaly than an OS which was
Perhaps what I would like to see is a Slashdot for professional, employed and intelligent people with real world experience (is that not what it was started for?), as the comments from anyone else are of absolutely no concern to myself.
Grow up and get a job you close minded OS bigots!
BTW: I'm a very experienced and well paid long-time IT Pro.
I cut my teeth on DOS and Windblows. That's how I know what a POS anything MS produces is.
Karma Schmarma
Jeez. DOS = Disk Operating System POS = Point Of Sale YOU = jeez. letstartover No offense. I don't like bitches so please don't be one.
It was my understanding that the machine suffered a BSOD. If it did not in fact BSOD and only had ir pointer problem then what is the big deal. I hate MS as much as anyone but I am not going to bust anyones chops over a ir pointer gone haywire. On the other hand if it did BSOD or suffer a shell reset then they deserve every bit of criticism they get.
Got Code?
Service Unavailable :)
> I'm glad that I outed you as a former MS employee,
:) Oh dear, I think I'll be turning my tail and running now. The great "Doc Ruby" is after me! It's too bad he didn't even bother to find out whether I can fight.
:( Now you'll actually have to get off your lazy butt and walk ten feet to the DVD player and press the PLAY button. Such torture! How did people ever survive without remote control?
I don't recall hiding it. I'm happy to tell anyone who asks about Microsoft and how little basis there is for bashing it.
> Who knew that you actually produced that crappy software?
Excuse me, but I did not produce any "crappy software". In fact, it was all pretty damn good, considering what it had to do. I don't know how long it's been since you've actually used any Microsoft software, but it must have been decades, since everything made by Microsoft on my machine is functioning very well, thank you. Any crashes I've seen were caused by third party software, mostly by games. Furthermore, I've seen no OS crashes since I've left Microsoft, where I had to run all those "buggy" daily builds of W2K, which in reality were more robust than the Linux developer branches.
> selling your developer soul to the beast
If that's how you say "making a living", you have my condolences.
> you don't even know that the only universal
> language among programmers is "profanity"
I would clarify that "profanity" is the universal language of bad programmers. Good programmers don't curse as much because our code usually works, and we don't put profanity in it because we respect our coworkers and, generally, have good manners.
> when you don't even realize that Stallman, who actually *is*
> a communist, doesn't speak for all of us in the commercial, yet open, software biz.
Oh goody! Stallman is a communist now, but you are not? Would you be so kind as to outline your disagreements? You seem to be in the same boat to me so far.
> Calling me a communist gets you a "fuck you" on Slashdot, and worse in person
Is that a threat?
> Here's a clue: since MS source code is as open within
> an MS corporate project as is any GNU code to anyone
No, it isn't. You get only your group's source code, and only because you need it. You certainly do not get write access to any code that you are not directly working on. Although you can ask for the code from another group, it is not a common practice and I don't recall any instances where that happened.
> does that make the MS Redmond campus some kind of "commune"
More like a college, really.
> So drop the obnxoius "communist" rhetoric that betrays your fascist attitude.
Perhaps you could clarify your meaning of the word "fascist"? I am getting an impression that you use it as "someone who doesn't agree with me".
> rather than the monopoly fascism that you're defending from your ex-boss.
One of the reasons Microsoft has a monopoly is that nobody has written anything better. I don't consider OpenOffice as good as MSOffice, and OpenOffice seems to be the only noteworthy competitor. There's KOffice, and a few other copies, but nothing substantial. Why don't you write one, if you are so "secure in your own power"?
> the home users left hanging when they're just
> trying to watch a movie that requires Bill's
> latest monopoly gristle, and they were foolish
> enough to unplug the remote
Oh, you poor thing. Your remote is broken
It was one of the ugliest looking mouse I ever had, and came with a very hard green platic mouse pad that could be used as a cutting board.
*sigh* Memories. I remember my dad bringing home a PC he used for work. Had a 3 button mouse, and a *gasp* EGA monitor. I quickly played through all my games to see them in all their 16 color glory.
I remember the cutting board mouse pads too.
I do a free software demo once a month. I've had problems, but nothing like a BSoD. My machines, like all the other demos at CES, stay up even if pieces fail.
It sounds to me like the Microsofties did fine.
I'm not sure how you can say that. Gates was obviously pissed and did not play well with other's who tried to help him. It was a classic display of lack of cool. The aftermath is this pathetic spin piece that could be summarized in two sentences but was not. The guy is falling on his sword and trying to blame hardware for what was obviously buggy and graceless software. A poor performance followed by a lie, how sorry can you get?
Let me clearly distinguish the differences between your world and a technical demonstration.
People go to the theater to be entertained. You are supposed to suspend your disbelief. When some gadget does not work, people are entertained anyway. In fact, it can be more fun that way. No one reasonable feels cheated.
People go to a tech demo to see what you have. When what you have fails, you've seen all you need to know. You might feel cheated if you let someone blow smoke on you and you then go buy the buggy junk because you think it's not really broken. On the rare occasion something does not work at one of my demo's, I tell my audience right there and then. I don't try to hide the problems or blame shift or charge people money for something afterward.
The whole thing is just Microsoft. They made something so buggy they could not even demo it this time. They hyped it before hand and they will continue to hype it. The spin is best characterized by the phrase that was repeated in the article:
I don't want to have that kind of problem with something I pay for that supposed to just work. Microsoft is supposed to make things easy, but they don't.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The article looks to me like unofficially sanctioned damage control. And they suckered Slashdot into spreading it.
Linux was ported to the 64 bit DEC Alpha, one of the first ports of Linux (first by Linus anyway, but there were earlier ports to, I think, m68k by others), over a decade ago.
Linux has been 64 bit for ten years. Before many *proprietary* OSes!
(NT for Alpha was not 64 bit, it was a 32bit port.).
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
ADB was NOT hot swappable.
It had the nasty ability to fry the controller on the mobo if you hot-plugged things. Granted this didn't happen every single time, but it would certainly mess up your day when it did happen
TV-mode version:
Our guest tonight is Sean. Sean is employed at MS and will now explain how Gates got BSOD-ed...
oops, correction, this just in, Sean was employed at MS, he's been canned.
hmm well... Sean also runs an excellent blog..
opps, correction Sean used to run a blog, it's been slashdotted
Tomorrow Sean will explain in detail at what time and how exactly his blog died of slashdot
It was rigged, it just did not work.
They should have used a full screen movie on a Mac.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's an interesting explanation, but I'm having a lot of trouble buying it.
My Myth box has a PS/2 keyboard connector, as well as several USB ports. I can easily connect a keyboard to it. If my remote control were to stop working for any reason, I'd still be able to control the system. I notice that the Alienware Media Center systems all have USB ports, too.
Given that they had set up a USB-based IR receiver with a powered USB booster, surely they were aware of the fact that relying on IR could be tricky. It's very difficult to believe that no one thought it might be a good idea to have some kind of backup input device that someone off stage could have used to kick off the damn slide show.
From the FA: "Sure, we could have had two Media Centers, but we wanted to show it all running off the same Media Center as a hub." This strikes me as classic misdirection. Like it would be utterly impossible to have one Media Center with two different input devices.
As I see it, either something more went wrong and this story was concocted to cover it up, or the whole team behind the presentation deserves to be fired for missing something so pitifully obvious.
I rather suspect the former.
I did enjoy watching Bill sit there all hunched over in his big cushy chair pecking away at the remote control. His plastic smile unwavering, even through Conan's "who's in charge of Mircosoft" comment. And then that weird comment about only having one remote control? No, Bill, it wouldn't be worse to have serveral remote controls, if they were for devices that actually *worked*.
We are used to Microsoft's demos and software crashing: nobody gives a damn.
The thing that they should take heat for is to call "communist" people who want to revise IP law. Microsoft deserves to take heat for that in particular because they are a convicted monopolist and the primary reason we don't have a free and competitive market in PC software.
In the 90's, I watched a left-handed co-worker decide to hot-move the mouse from one side of the Mac ADB keyboard to the other while preparing to begin her segment of a demo. Before I can think to cry out "Nooooooooooo!!!!!" she had crashed the machine in front of the entire auditorium audience. Thank god ADB was dumped for USB.
> Communism and Free Software may be derived from :) I would put it more like this:
> the same base class (more on this in a sec)
template class Communism;
class FreeSoftware : public Communism
> Incorrect. Stallman simply claims that end-users
> should have the right to modify software as they
> need, and re-distribute the changes as they need.
Yes, but I was describing it from the developer's point of view. To normal people, free software simply means that they don't have to pay for it; as a previous Slashdot article mentioned, users don't really care about modification. Because of this, it is largely irrelevant to them whether the software is under the GPL, BSD, or a public domain license.
The developer has a different point of view. GPL is specifically written to prevent programmers from making money from their work. Yes, you can make money from support, or custom modifications, but that's not the same thing.
When you make money from support, people pay you for the personal attention and for being the scapegoat for their troubles. They don't pay you for the program you are supporting. You didn't even have to write it in the first place; you can run a company supporting Microsoft products. When you make money from customization, you are selling the custom code you write for your customers. You are not selling the original program. You didn't even have to write it in the first place; you can run a company creating custom frontends for Microsoft Access.
Because of this, there really are no companies making money from free software. The free software is really free. I would also equate "free" with "worthless"; no, not to the end user, but to the developer. Once he puts his program under the GPL, that's the end of the program. That the GPL allows him to sell it anyway is irrelevant, since nobody will buy it when it is available for nothing. And if he can't sell it, he can't make money from his work, for that program is his work too, not just the support for it he might provide, or any additional code he might write in the future.
How will he eat? From charitable contributions, of course. Let's talk about that.
> Simply discarding the other side as too simplistic/naiive
There's nothing simplistic or naive about the philosophy of charity. That doesn't make it any less evil.
> Well, this is the way things work, your apparent cynicism aside
The cynicism is real, because things don't work that way most of the time.
> The community does indeed provide bug reports,
> bug fixes, documentation, web site support, new
> code, and so forth.
Yes, but not much. Having authored a few OSS projects myself I can say that this does indeed happen, but I can also say that the contributions are miniscule. It's not something you rely on, and it's not something that will advance your project in any significant way. You might find some developers to help you work on the project, who will do so to avoid writing the same thing from scratch, but most of the time the project is your own and you carry it on your own back. I don't think this is a bad thing, but it's something OSS advocates don't often mention.
> But not only rich people give money to the
> developers; companies do when they buy software
> from companies that employ FOSS developers,
> end-users do in gratitude or because they want
> to support the development,
And finally, we come to talk about charity. Yes, charity does work for some people. Linus himself is being paid for working on something that is given away for nothing. The problem with charity is that it makes your life dependent on other people's good will, and only on other people's good will. When dealing with a trader, you give value for value, your program for his food. You are giving him something he wants in exchange for something you want, bargaining until you are both satisfied with the transaction.Thi
Having watched the video (ironic, really -- I just watched an 80 minute M$ promo video because I hate them), I can't help but feel that Gates was working off of a teleprompter buried in the floor in front of him -- he seems to regularly look down at the floor while he's talking. Could be just his demeanor, but ...
Anyone agree/disagree?
It was designed to be hotswappable. They didn't market it as such because it was temperamental. However, a freeware app called Mouse Jolt cleared up problems if you swapped anyway.
(I've swapped keyboards and mice between old Macs while running, and they worked for me. YMMV.)
Please, sir, we have some guys at Marketing to do that. Do not bother to invent some lame-ass story about Apache whenever our systems crash. Your time is far too valuable for that!
Sorta makes you wonder how much pocket change that cost Bill.
--
Cheers, Gene
So, what was that middle button's utility? In X-Window, you click the middle button to paste whatever is selected in any window. Just one click, instead of the four keystrokes (control, c, control, v) needed to paste something in MS-Windows.
Except, if I recall, Solaris.
Might have been a traffic problem. I got to both of them on Firefox 1.0 with no problem.
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington
I think you mean HFS
HFS, HFS+, and Journaled HFS are used in modern versions of Mac OS.
HPFS is OS/2's filesystem, and has support in NT 3.51 and partially in NT4
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
How does a power failure cause a blue screen of death and how does a usb booster cause infrared interference? His "explanations" really don't make any sense at all and seem to be distracting blame from the products that failed onto things that had little to nothing to do with it. Don't fall for this blog article it is obviously part of a coverup as to what really happened.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Try Linux instead. :)
Nope.
r is/
Linux was 64bit before Solaris. The first Solaris/SunOS release to run on a 64bit platform was Solaris 2.5 on UltraSPARC I in 1995, but TTBOMK it was still a 32bit port (TTBOMK).
I dont think Solaris was fully 64bit capable until Solaris 7, released in 1998, when it gained ability to export 64bit VM to userspace (on UltraSPARC only, and, IIRC, hardware problems with some early UltraSPARCs precluded ability to run 64bit userspace on those CPUs).
See, eg: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/solaris/versions/sola
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Unfortunately a long time ago. Please note that I was not running windows 3.1 only dos. So I take the third mouse button was for games and running Geniuses own mouse configuration test (could test all three buttons). I am not to sure if Display Write 4 used the middle button (not a bad word processor in its day).
Speaking of technical glitches when it matters most, here's a quick story of a wedding I was running sound for (not something I normally do, but I was drafted).
I had the various wedding songs in mp3 format on my Dell notebook. I'd been given the cue that the bride was ready to make her entrance, so as soon as I started the Bridal March she would enter. I was just about to click Play on my notebook when it gives a siren-like sound (not out of the soundcard / line out, but out of some internal speaker) and turns itself off.
Now fortunately (extremely) for me I had copied the songs onto a CF card, so I popped it into my Pocket PC, plugged it into the soundboard, and the wedding began. There was maybe a 20-30 second delay which no-one even noticed.
After the wedding I found the problem. The HDD was somehow not well seated, and the alarm was the BIOS saying the HDD had failed. I popped it out and re-seated it and everything was fine.
I had used that notebook at least 8 hours a day, every day, for 3 years and it had never done that before.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Your right. I stand corrected.
Thanks,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Did you even bother to check the content of the site?
When Apple's CEO goes on stage, he always has someone waiting backstage running a secondary machine that he can switch over to in case something goes wrong.
.Mac it was running on a server backstage, not on the actual .mac servers. Which was kinda a BS demo since it ran 10x faster that it really would over the internet, but seriously, you wouldn't want to have your demo go bad just because somebody in the convention center started hogging all the bandwidth.
I can't believe MS would use an actual Passport account over a live internet connection. When SJ demoed
You wonder if MS actually plans these things or BG just gets up there and wings it...
2) The analog to a start menu was in the first Apple Mac GUIs, WAY before Windows.
The first Mac did not have have a start menu. Just the icons on the desktop UI.
mwm and fvwm did have a start menu, and this predated Win95 by many years, although the start menu for most early X11 systems was a popup menu rather than a taskbar. NeXT has a taskbar though.
Alas I had a CGA (at least not a monochrome Hercules )
It seems this happens often enough that they shouldn't risk actually demonstrating it live.
...but I guess media player would crash.
Come on, don't you guys watch Xena? It's always Evil Wizards!
UTF-8: There and Back Again
"At least Vader eventually overcomes the evil that controls him."
Sure but then he dies heh.
> there is a classical American definition (one that is considered
> an insult). That is what USSR and China did.
USSR has never claimed to be a communist society. It was a goal to reach in the future, but certainly not the reality. USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and none of its citizens ever called its government system "communism". It was called socialism, and it is indeed exactly what you describe: a centrally controlled, planned economy.
> It is one where a small privilaged group of ppl decide
> what products to make and how much they will costs.
> They are protected by the state by a number of laws
> from any real compition.
You are missing the point. There was no competition because there was no such thing as a "company". Competition existed, but only between different factories in the same industry, and consisted mostly of "overachieving the plan"; competing on quantity rather than quality. It's not that increasing quality was beyond them, it's that quality is more difficult to measure when the only way to do so is with quality inspectors.
> They were expensive, quite poorly built, and had poor support.
I'd agree on the last two, but not the first. If anything was plentiful in USSR, it was cheap stuff.
> The largest of the companies would routinely take
> over the smaller ones, either by virtue of their size, or by using state laws.
You are thinking of the United States. USSR didn't have companies. (Not until Gorbachev, anyhow)
> it had better milage/better service than American cars.
> In terms of safety, well, you died if they crashed. hummmmm....
Nonsense. You obviously haven't seen the Volga; (the second most popular model after Zhiguli). That beast was made of steel so thick, you could drive in Iraq in it. In fact, I remember seeing some neat commercials where it was walked on by elephants, dropped from a three story building, and still started fine and drove away. When you have a planned economy and don't have to pay for the steel, you can use as much as the boss thinks is necessary.
> Ppl would trade goods/service for other goods/service.
> I am sure that you have heard the term "house raising" or "Barn raising".
These are entirely different practices. When you barter, you get something you believe to be equally valuable to what you gave away. When you do "barn raising", you are doing community service, where you give away something of value, thinking that you might get something back later. Barter is a trade, with a buyer and a seller. Money just makes the process easier. Community service is not a trade, it's indentured servitude, because you are not guaranteed to get equal value for what you give.
> It was a sign of bad faith to not participate if you were capable.
> In fact, to not participate routinely excluded the family from the community.
Same in the USSR under socialism. Boy, I can sure remember washing those floors as a kid...
> A number of them objected to these, as they would stifle innovation.
And they do, as numerous Slashdot articles argue.
> to allow one to produce the idea, but not stifle the future
With the result that nobody ever looks into the Patent database in fear of "willful infringement". So how is this better than just not telling anyone?
> So, I am curious. Which is really communist and which
> is true-American capitalists as well as patriots?
Well, gosh darn it, you have nearly convinced me. I'd never thought I would have to agree that the United States is a communist country.
Hey, what a bait and switch this is! The remote control problem was funny, yes, but the BSOD that happend during the game demo - THAT'S what I want to see "explained"! I can't believe that either a) this guy just "failed to mention it" or b) the Slashdot editor didn't tone down the exhberance in the headline. The headline should have been "One of Two glitches at MS CES Demo Explained" or something similar. Sheesh.
Has anybody ever seen an OSX box crap out on Steve? I have not heard of this or seen it.
Steve J's demos are more heavily scripted and polished, like an informercial. Remember Steve J was the business/sales guy, Steve W was the technical genius. You need both sides for success but it helps to keep your Steve's straight. Steve J is a superior pitchman and puts on better shows, part of this is to work in much more highly controlled environments. Onstage/backstage of Conan is quite different than MacWorld Expo.
The machine that was running Forza was the one that had a BSOD. It wasn't running on an X-Box because the X-Box doesn't have a BSOD, it has a green screen of death. Either that or some developer thought it was funny to make errors in the game look like a BSOD, in which case he picked the wrong time for a joke :)
Just a quick aside here, people who specialize in any given OS are far more likely to see the deep, advanced benefits of that system and compare that to what little they can discern about a competing OS in the week that they have used it.
For example Mac OS7 had an incredible file system which had abstracted out all file positioning activities away from the actual position on the drive or even the system's perception of the file position on the drive. Searches were instantaneous, as things were indexed in the background. In addition, one's applications never needed to explicitly define a file path, they could do everything symbolically (this folder, the mac folder, etc), by name, by ID, by handle, etc, with no performance hit. The end-user can rename almost anything, and move almost anything anywhere, and all applications will keep running happily. I knew this pretty intimately, and came to rely upon that sort of advanced knowledge. When using Windows or Linux for the first time, this is what I was comparing them to, and they felt backwards and half-assed. Why Can't I just move photoshop to a folder called "Graphics Applications" and not have everything just work? What does any of those millions of extra files lying around in Linux DO? On the other hand, now that I'm a more experienced Windows user, I look back on OS7's memory management scheme and cringe. From a Linux perspective I look at file permissions systems as a tremendously powerful defensive line as opposed to the silly holdover inconvienience it once struck me as.
Any "switch" stories you hear will be colored by these perceptions. "What do you mean I have only one interface choice?" "Where is my ActiveX scripting on BeOS?" "I see type, but how does Debian know the creator app?" That's why these OS debates usually degrade so quickly: Person A is comparing a high-level knowledge of OS 1 to a superficial knowledge of OS 2, and person B is comparing a very high-level knowledge of OS 2 to a superficial knowledge of OS 1.
That doesn't mean that such comparisons are impossible, that just means that you need an intimate knowledge and years of use on multiple systems including the ones in question before you're qualified to do a comparison. "Switch" stories and grandstanding from people with a favorite OS fall down for this reason.
The ______ Agenda
Hmmm. That hasn't been my experience at all.
In general I use a mix of bleeding-edge and ancient hardware. It's true that it seems to take about six months before a bleeding-edge product gets a custom Linux driver, but OTOH Fedora, Mandrake, and even OpenBSD seem to find my USB drives, ATI graphics cards, NVIDIA on-board graphics chipsets, miscellaneous sound cards, dual CPUs, ancient SCSI scanners, DVD burners, PS/2 mice, USB mice, keyboards, trackpads, and parallel ZIP drives just fine, thank you. No configuration required.
On the other hand, I can't count the number of times my colleagues, wife, and friends have complained that installing some WidgetDriver 5.x gave them a semipermanent BSOD on a losedows machine. My wife manages IT for a Losedows business, and relies on frequent fresh system installs to keep everything running. I've NEVER had to re-install from scratch to repair any Linux system.
So, er, I call bullshit. I know, IHBT. IWHAND.
Reminds me of a BoingBoing story a while ago about a guy who was crowing about the convenience using a wireless switch to control his garbage disposal. Works great until you stick your hand down there just as your neighbor tries out his wireless switch controlled garage door...
I downloaded the BT. It was phenomenally sad. Think the words Microsoft, experience, media, consumers and all those horrid things. If you dont believe me watch the vid. It is truly one big commercial. Well done MS.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
The Sad State of Writing and Editing
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/08/1 427212
Next to conan, he looks like a 12 year old kid.
Half the bigger projectors run Windows CE as their OS.. you could probably get a BSOD from that during a linux presentation too. Bugger if your project caught a CE virus
Mangee: Father to Lliam
Sadly, money and power are the things used as the definition of success today.
I agree that the accumulation of money and/or power is not in any way admirable, but the sad truth is, they matter more than anything truly valuable in today's world.
Myself, I appreciate creativity and intelligence above other things. I have to make up my own mind about who I respect and admire, and those people are mostly relatively unknown.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I don't expect things to change.
Ah white, cyan, and magenta (or yellow, red, and white)... 320x200... makes me feel like dusting off Alleycat...
Well, lets see... debian runs on all these different platforms. That's not "frothing groupthink", that's FACT. Windows runs on 2 of them, and 1 of those only recently (IA32 and IA64).
I'm just sick of this "Windows is less stable because they can't control the hardware they run on" crap. Linux supports more, and more varied forms of hardware, hands down.
The first Mac did not have have a start menu. Just the icons on the desktop UI.
Presumably by "analog to a start menu" he meant the Apple Menu, which has indeed existed since the original Mac.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;