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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.
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
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.
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make install -not war
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
And notice that despite that, M$ still manages to be the software that is everyware.
Excuse my ignorance but, wouldn't it have been better to use a RF remote as oppose to an IR one?
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
How does using Windows stop a remote control working?
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?
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.
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.
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.
I would like to know if there was any testing done? I didn't think the remote not working was a big deal, remotes break, batteries die, etc.
What I thought looked bad was the big BSOD on the XBox in the middle of a game.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
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.
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.
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.
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
Your brain is not getting the message that the OS needs to be stable enough to handle changes like that. The proof of the kernel crash is the BSoD, regardless what caused it. What happens to the thousands of home users who do something like that, call Alexander? It's not acceptable to peddle something that fragile to unsophisticated users who just want to watch their movie in their darkened living room. 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. Drop the baseless Microsoft apologies, flamer, and leave the "troll" accusations for mods who can't even post a hollow attack like yours.
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make install -not war
That was more likely due to the large plasma TVs they were also powering from the same generator.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
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.
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.
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.
Unlike Apple, Microsoft does not have tight control over the hundreds of thousands of parts that go into the development of a PC. At least Apple can maintain a high level of quality control over hardware along with their OS.
Ahhhh, that explains why Linux is so stable. Torvalds rules over the hardware manufacturers with an iron fist!
(if you hadn't noticed, linux runs on much more varied hardware than windows does, and is much more stable. MS has no excuse anymore)
Wow...
So because you can't manage to install Linux or have hardware that for some reason is not supported by Linux (and I really would like to know if you are just trolling and what hw and problems you have had), you claim that the parent poster is wrong. Amazing!
I have used Linux since kernel 0.91 and as my main OS since 1995. I have installed it on a wide varity of hardware. Problems, sure... Not been able to install it? Never. And in the past few years close to zero problems. Currently running Gentoo on 2 P4's and and AMD64 box. The 2 P4's are Dell's, the AMD64 a no-name box.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Versions of Windows that have failed utterly:
Windows NT 3.5 for MIPS processors
Windows NT 3.51 for Power PC processors
Windows NT 4.0 for Alpha processors
Windows XP for the Itanium processor
Why? No one would write any software for these NEW NON-Intel compatible hardware platforms. Not even MS Office. Yes there was one version of Office for a RISC platform, Office 4.2 for the Alpha.
Your Average Joe
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.
$ blog.seanalexander.com 25
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