Microsoft Owns Up To 360 Defects

Next Generation reports on Microsoft's acceptance of responsibility for early 360 defects. While originally claiming that system failures were well within the norm for consumer electronics, they've now adopted a more service-friendly attitude. From the article: "Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it's a higher rate than we are satisfied with. We've made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs."

Comments

Bad writing drives me nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it is a part and parcel of this language, but the fact that I see the "own up", "Face up", and other such crap even in good newspapers now tells me that college has to educate these writers a bit better.

From William Zinnser's "On Writing":
http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sourc es/zinsser.htm

3. Clutter

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds--the writer is always slightly behind. New varieties sprout overnight, and by noon they are part of American speech. John Dean holds the record. In just one day of testimony on TV during the Watergate hearings he raised the clutter quotient by 400 percent. The next day everyone in America was saying "at this point in time" instead of "now."

Consider all the prepositions that are routinely draped onto verbs that don't need any help. Head up. Free up. Face up to. We no longer head committees. We head them up. We don't face problems anymore. We face up to them when we can free up a few minutes. A small detail, you may say--not worth bothering about. It is worth bothering about. The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details. Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there. "Up" in "free up" shouldn't be there. Can we picture anything being freed up? The writer of clean English must examine every word that he puts on paper. He will find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

I will admit "own up" is not a problem in the same way that "up" is an extraneous word like in phases such as "face up" but would it kill the /. editing staff to use the word "admit", "confess", or anything else?

Great! The software's next?

[Svenne]

That was the hardware. Now why don't they fix their crappy media center so that it will allow the 360 to play anything other than WMV and MPEG? There's this container format called AVI. Hello, Microsoft? Have you heard of it?

No, Transcode360 (or any form of transcoding) isn't good enough.