When it comes to browsers, marketshare is very important.
For example, IE-only websites are dissapearing because Firefox already has 10% marketshare and is growing.
So the NYT ad (and all the other marketing) already paid off, because fewer websits lock out the browser.
Because this was the most important problem for Mozilla and Firefox-users, marketing indeed improved Mozilla/Firefox more than any programmer could have.
I also don't think that this is MSFT's problem [because it's the PSU's problem]
OK, please explain which parts of the package which clearly has the "Microsoft"-label on it are "Microsoft's problem" and which aren't.
There is absolutely no way that microsoft could test the PSU chealy
Actually it's trivial to test PSUs. That technology is decades old. Also there would be no need to test it with an XBox360, you just test wether it fits specifications (Voltage, Amps - just 2 parameters, there are few devices which are so primitive to check against specifications...) and there you go.
There is no magic involved, either Microsoft put out wrong specifications for the PSU which are barely enough for running an XBox360 or Microsoft didn't make sure the PSUs fit specifications.
As the original poster (OP), I'm certainly no MS fanboy. This early Xbox-2 or 260 or 360 or 480 or whatever it is hasn't garnered much interest for me, except for some amusement factor at the release problems.
However, a PSU problem while stupid and frustrating for early adopters it doesn't necessarily take away from the actual 360 design. In fact, the external PSU in this case may be a boon for MS, because its much easier to replace than taking the entire console apart.
First of all, I find it kind of hard to believe that the problem lies (only) at the PSU because PSU's are:
>old technology, therefore relatively reliable
very easy to test (there is just voltage and amps, it's not rocket science)
So in all honesty I think it's much more likely that the PSU is operating within specifications but the XBox360 just sucks more juice in some cases which is causing the problems.
To believe that Microsoft orders thousands of PSUs and they don't check wether they fullfill specifications is pretty naive, IMO.
I'd say it's much more likely that the specifications are not enough in some situations (for example when things get hot, electric resistance gets higher and the whole thing needs more) and/or something in the XBox sucks more juice in some situations than anticipated.
But of course that's speculation.
Maybe it is really just the PSU which is to blame - but then I don't see how that excuses MS in any way.
True enough, and this is an indication that MS was more worried about pushing these out to the market as fast as possible rather than QA. I hardly think Microsoft wants a looming PR nightmare for a flagship product(especially right before the holiday shopping season), but I can totally see their endemic lack of quality assurance rearing its ugly head.
IN contrast, Nintendo has historically been a bastion of good quality, where they _never want a customer to have a bad out-of-box experience with their products.
Yes, exactly my opinion.
As for the dust -by -summer issue, well it is interesting to note that the Xbox360 only has a 90-day warranty which will be expired on these early units by then.
Only in America, in the EU we have half a year no-questions-asked warranty and 2 years warranty if the customer can prove the problem is the vendor's fault.
However, even in America, they are shooting themselves in the foot that way: There are 2 possibilities for the customer: Buy a new XBox360 (which means big losses for Microsoft) or not buying an XBox360 and therefore no XBox360 games. It's lose-lose for Microsoft.
I don't think they will ever have a profitable year with the XBox360, it looks like it will be just like the XBox1.
So, it really appears that one of Microsofts PSU suppliers screwed up.
The most important reason why I avoid any Microsoft-products when possible is that whenever there are problems, it's never Microsoft's fault.
And instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft (plus fanboys) start to play the blame-game and fingerpointing.
I don't care whose fault it is.
Maybe some PSU supplier screwed up, however it's Microsoft's oblitgation to do the quality-control of the end-product, so they should have never shipped these units.
Especially after XBox1 was supposed to be a test-run to gain experience (according to MS marketing) something like this just should not happen.
Oh yeah, and because dust is a pretty good isolator and also reduces the effectiveness of fans, expect much more failed XBoxes in a few months, especially in the summer.
Actually a few days is much too short to fix the problem, especially when it's related to overheating.
Also I think that the launch in Japan and EU will actually get worse because reports from the USA about unstable and overheating XBoxes just a few days before launch (= at the worst possible time) will scare away a lot of customers, this is the Internet-age after all.
And in real human terms, variations within the group are usually larger than variations between the groups.
That is just wrong, plain and simple.
When humans evolved, they started in Africa as what may be called a handful tribes (let's numerate them 1 to 10). One tribe, which happened to be near Egypt spread over the world and formed all non-black people.
Because of that, it is indeed true, that genetically blacks have a larger variation within the group than for example the variance between Europeans and Asians.
However the reverse isn't true at all and even though the political correct have picked up that one case and try to make an axion out of it doesn't make it so.
If DRM were in place today and I was a freeware developer, what prevents me from just issuing a DRM key (or whatever the process is) and making my terms of agreement "anyone who requests one gets one and I charge nothing".
The ultimate goal is to create a DRM-structure of Microsoft-"approved" software, ie just like drivers. And a freeware developer can't afford that.
Of course you will be able to run not-approved software (with scary warning dialogs) at first, but the final goal is to create a closed system that cannot run "bad" software.
It is the poor who are worst stricken by obesity. They cannot afford these things, they have to eat cheap junk which destroys their body. They do not have time to cook fresh food because they are often working 2 jobs etc.
Oh, come on. First of all, vegetarian food is much cheaper than meat. In every restaurant I look, the cheapest dishes usually contain no or only little meat.
And in the supermarket it's the same thing.
Also, I really, really have my doubts that this woman here had no time to cook because she had to work 2 jobs.
it was highlighting the fact that the "smoking in public places" issue is just a red herring to distract people from the REAL health risk, carcinogens like benzene in petrol fumes, and (worst of all), diesel exhaust.
When it comes to tiny particles from diesel exhaust, a German newspaper made an experiment:
In a closed garage, they burnt a cigarette and (after exchanging air) let a diesel engine run for one minute. It turned out there are more tiny particles ("Feinstaub" in german) (which make diesel exhaust different) in the cigarette smoke of just one cigarette than in one minute of diesel exhaust.
(Of course the engine will use much more oxygen than a cigarette, that's why you can kill yourself in a garage with a car, however you die of lack of oxygen and not cancer when you do that and diesel is no different than other engines.)
Considering that they kicked their most experienced competitor out of that "very distant and very sloppy second", I'd say they did pretty well.
That is irrelevant. The market leader is the yardstick.
Only losers choose other losers as yardsticks (true everywhere, not just at consoles.)
This is how MS has always worked- the first version sucks and loses a ton of money (the Xbox somehow dodged the former), but they do learn from their mistakes when they're actually forced to compete with someone.
Yeah sure. We are all now using MS Bob, using MS' "Otto"-project in our cars and we all use their "HomeR"-project stuff in our homes.
Meanwhile, in real life, out of Microsoft-fantasyland most projects Microsoft did were failures, including XBox.
I run all my software, even my linux box, on a non free, non modifiable CPU. Why do you draw the line at the software/hardware boundry?
By using this weasely phrase, you should already know.
The point is that the IA32 commands (like those of most other CPUs as well) are all very well documented and open. In the case of IA32, there are even multiple vendors available. Also anybody can look up what exactly each command does.
This makes it possible to compile most OSS software on many different CPUs.
Windows on the other hand is completely closed. It is almost impossible to port an OSS project on the Windows-platform to anything else. (See Virtualdub as an example. It is Windows-only and will stay that way)
The point is that OpenOffice is written by people who know absolutely nothing about marketing. (Calling it "OpenOffice.org" is the best example of that. That's a website, not a product.)
It's pretty much a similar situation as with Mozilla: Firefox isn't that different or better than Mozilla (actually, to be honest, I still prefer Mozilla's preferences), it also isn't faster. The difference is that Firefox was marketed much better than Mozilla, so it really took off while Mozilla never gained a significant userbase.
Google will hopefully do something similar with OpenOffice. Actually most people only need the Writer-component and are also pretty likely to only get Writer-documents by email or on the web. (Spreadsheets and presentations are pretty rare in comparison) So it would be great if a Writer-only version would be created, so that when somebody stubles across a.odw, he can download a 10-20MB OpenOffice-Writer. It doesn't really matter wether it's faster than the whole suite, people will think it's faster when you tell them. (Just like people think that Firefox is faster than Mozilla, which it never was. However Mozilla has the image of being slow and bloated and people didn't even want to try it. Firefox was essentially the same (being "stripped down" only affects download time and used disk space, at runtime they are pretty much the same), but with a new image of being lean and fast, which made all the difference.)
There should also be consistent names (OpenOffice.org is the name of the website and the community that is creating OpenOffice, the product), but Google unfortunately doesn't have the power to change that...
Also Google is getting a really strong weapon against Microsoft. What do you think will a small text-only link on Google.com to OpenOffice cost for Microsoft? One billion? 10 billion? More?
If they really want to put Microsoft in a world of pain, they could just do some dirty tricks like convert every.doc they find in.odw (instead of.html as they currently do) - everytime the server holding the.doc is down you would need something that can read.odw. Yeah, that would piss quite some people off and it would contradict Google's motto, but if Microsoft declares all-out war it could break the Word-stranglehold within half a year and destroy Microsoft's cashcow.
If they don't pay attention and become competitor in the "normal" hosting business, Windows by hosters could share the same fate as OS/2 on PCs: Companies don't like to put competitor's products on their products.
They survive because of customer lock-in (aka "Integration" in salesspeak), "standardization" (with desktop systems) and the delusion (which is interestingly put forward by both pro- and anti Microsoft people) that "sooner or later" Microsoft will dominate every market and so it's better to bet on the winner.
However, with years of IIS being pretty stagnant or slowly losing marketshare, this delusion cannot be sustained forever, more and more people realize that OSS is not just a fad and is here to stay.
Also with each round of forced upgrades on the IIS-side, some jump ship.
It will probably will take a decade or two, but then IIS-fans will find themselves in the very situation they wanted to avoid: Being a tiny minority, fighting with bad 3rd party support and being frowned upon.
In some countries it already happened: In Germany, IIS runs only 5.56% of domains (down from over 20% 5 years ago) - cheap German webhosters don't offer Windows anymore at all, some webhosters charge extra for Windows and only few charge the same (however those are usually the most expensive webhosters anyway)
You have to answer that question, you bought a Windows-Mobile phone.
I have absolutely no problems with my Treo600, friends of mine have similar "bloated" phones by Nokia and Samsung and they all work fine without glitches.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, IE-only websites are dissapearing because Firefox already has 10% marketshare and is growing.
So the NYT ad (and all the other marketing) already paid off, because fewer websits lock out the browser.
Because this was the most important problem for Mozilla and Firefox-users, marketing indeed improved Mozilla/Firefox more than any programmer could have.
OK, please explain which parts of the package which clearly has the "Microsoft"-label on it are "Microsoft's problem" and which aren't.
There is absolutely no way that microsoft could test the PSU chealy
Actually it's trivial to test PSUs. That technology is decades old. Also there would be no need to test it with an XBox360, you just test wether it fits specifications (Voltage, Amps - just 2 parameters, there are few devices which are so primitive to check against specifications...) and there you go.
There is no magic involved, either Microsoft put out wrong specifications for the PSU which are barely enough for running an XBox360 or Microsoft didn't make sure the PSUs fit specifications.
In both cases I think it is Microsoft's problem.
First of all, I find it kind of hard to believe that the problem lies (only) at the PSU because PSU's are:
So in all honesty I think it's much more likely that the PSU is operating within specifications but the XBox360 just sucks more juice in some cases which is causing the problems.
To believe that Microsoft orders thousands of PSUs and they don't check wether they fullfill specifications is pretty naive, IMO.
I'd say it's much more likely that the specifications are not enough in some situations (for example when things get hot, electric resistance gets higher and the whole thing needs more) and/or something in the XBox sucks more juice in some situations than anticipated.
But of course that's speculation.
Maybe it is really just the PSU which is to blame - but then I don't see how that excuses MS in any way.
True enough, and this is an indication that MS was more worried about pushing these out to the market as fast as possible rather than QA. I hardly think Microsoft wants a looming PR nightmare for a flagship product(especially right before the holiday shopping season), but I can totally see their endemic lack of quality assurance rearing its ugly head. IN contrast, Nintendo has historically been a bastion of good quality, where they _never want a customer to have a bad out-of-box experience with their products.
Yes, exactly my opinion.
As for the dust -by -summer issue, well it is interesting to note that the Xbox360 only has a 90-day warranty which will be expired on these early units by then.
Only in America, in the EU we have half a year no-questions-asked warranty and 2 years warranty if the customer can prove the problem is the vendor's fault.
However, even in America, they are shooting themselves in the foot that way: There are 2 possibilities for the customer: Buy a new XBox360 (which means big losses for Microsoft) or not buying an XBox360 and therefore no XBox360 games. It's lose-lose for Microsoft.
I don't think they will ever have a profitable year with the XBox360, it looks like it will be just like the XBox1.
The most important reason why I avoid any Microsoft-products when possible is that whenever there are problems, it's never Microsoft's fault.
And instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft (plus fanboys) start to play the blame-game and fingerpointing.
I don't care whose fault it is.
Maybe some PSU supplier screwed up, however it's Microsoft's oblitgation to do the quality-control of the end-product, so they should have never shipped these units.
Especially after XBox1 was supposed to be a test-run to gain experience (according to MS marketing) something like this just should not happen.
Oh yeah, and because dust is a pretty good isolator and also reduces the effectiveness of fans, expect much more failed XBoxes in a few months, especially in the summer.
Also I think that the launch in Japan and EU will actually get worse because reports from the USA about unstable and overheating XBoxes just a few days before launch (= at the worst possible time) will scare away a lot of customers, this is the Internet-age after all.
That is just wrong, plain and simple.
When humans evolved, they started in Africa as what may be called a handful tribes (let's numerate them 1 to 10). One tribe, which happened to be near Egypt spread over the world and formed all non-black people.
Because of that, it is indeed true, that genetically blacks have a larger variation within the group than for example the variance between Europeans and Asians.
However the reverse isn't true at all and even though the political correct have picked up that one case and try to make an axion out of it doesn't make it so.
Actually with pictures that have very few colors, gif is usually smaller, at least in my experience.
Also since all the patents are expired by now, I don't see a reason to avoid it, so I use both depending on the application at hand.
Everytime when I argue with Microsoft-fanboys, I'm thinking exactly the same.
They are repeating the MS-partyline over and over but don't understand - or don't want to understand what it means what they are talking about.
Microsoft calls losing 1 billion/year a success, by that standards, yeah I also guarantee that Microsoft will call XBox360 a smashing success.
Since Sony released the PS2.
Seriously.
The ultimate goal is to create a DRM-structure of Microsoft-"approved" software, ie just like drivers. And a freeware developer can't afford that.
Of course you will be able to run not-approved software (with scary warning dialogs) at first, but the final goal is to create a closed system that cannot run "bad" software.
Oh, come on. First of all, vegetarian food is much cheaper than meat. In every restaurant I look, the cheapest dishes usually contain no or only little meat.
And in the supermarket it's the same thing.
Also, I really, really have my doubts that this woman here had no time to cook because she had to work 2 jobs.
Sad, but sometimes true.
But...
Actually I've heard that it's banned on most beaches of Australia because the cleaning of cigarette buds is (or was) costing millions every year.
When it comes to tiny particles from diesel exhaust, a German newspaper made an experiment:
In a closed garage, they burnt a cigarette and (after exchanging air) let a diesel engine run for one minute. It turned out there are more tiny particles ("Feinstaub" in german) (which make diesel exhaust different) in the cigarette smoke of just one cigarette than in one minute of diesel exhaust.
(Of course the engine will use much more oxygen than a cigarette, that's why you can kill yourself in a garage with a car, however you die of lack of oxygen and not cancer when you do that and diesel is no different than other engines.)
That is irrelevant. The market leader is the yardstick.
Only losers choose other losers as yardsticks (true everywhere, not just at consoles.)
This is how MS has always worked- the first version sucks and loses a ton of money (the Xbox somehow dodged the former), but they do learn from their mistakes when they're actually forced to compete with someone.
Yeah sure. We are all now using MS Bob, using MS' "Otto"-project in our cars and we all use their "HomeR"-project stuff in our homes.
Meanwhile, in real life, out of Microsoft-fantasyland most projects Microsoft did were failures, including XBox.
Just look at Mozilla and Firefox and you see what a difference a little marketing can make.
By using this weasely phrase, you should already know.
The point is that the IA32 commands (like those of most other CPUs as well) are all very well documented and open. In the case of IA32, there are even multiple vendors available. Also anybody can look up what exactly each command does.
This makes it possible to compile most OSS software on many different CPUs.
Windows on the other hand is completely closed. It is almost impossible to port an OSS project on the Windows-platform to anything else. (See Virtualdub as an example. It is Windows-only and will stay that way)
The point is that OpenOffice is written by people who know absolutely nothing about marketing. (Calling it "OpenOffice.org" is the best example of that. That's a website, not a product.)
It's pretty much a similar situation as with Mozilla: Firefox isn't that different or better than Mozilla (actually, to be honest, I still prefer Mozilla's preferences), it also isn't faster. The difference is that Firefox was marketed much better than Mozilla, so it really took off while Mozilla never gained a significant userbase.
Google will hopefully do something similar with OpenOffice. Actually most people only need the Writer-component and are also pretty likely to only get Writer-documents by email or on the web. (Spreadsheets and presentations are pretty rare in comparison) So it would be great if a Writer-only version would be created, so that when somebody stubles across a .odw, he can download a 10-20MB OpenOffice-Writer. It doesn't really matter wether it's faster than the whole suite, people will think it's faster when you tell them. (Just like people think that Firefox is faster than Mozilla, which it never was. However Mozilla has the image of being slow and bloated and people didn't even want to try it. Firefox was essentially the same (being "stripped down" only affects download time and used disk space, at runtime they are pretty much the same), but with a new image of being lean and fast, which made all the difference.)
There should also be consistent names (OpenOffice.org is the name of the website and the community that is creating OpenOffice, the product), but Google unfortunately doesn't have the power to change that...
Also Google is getting a really strong weapon against Microsoft. What do you think will a small text-only link on Google.com to OpenOffice cost for Microsoft? One billion? 10 billion? More?
If they really want to put Microsoft in a world of pain, they could just do some dirty tricks like convert every .doc they find in .odw (instead of .html as they currently do) - everytime the server holding the .doc is down you would need something that can read .odw. Yeah, that would piss quite some people off and it would contradict Google's motto, but if Microsoft declares all-out war it could break the Word-stranglehold within half a year and destroy Microsoft's cashcow.
"Mutations and natural selection" IS "actual evolution".
After all it shows to customers that Windows (and support, etc.) can disappear anytime without (much) warning.
I think many will evaluate alternatives because of this move.
If they don't pay attention and become competitor in the "normal" hosting business, Windows by hosters could share the same fate as OS/2 on PCs: Companies don't like to put competitor's products on their products.
They survive because of customer lock-in (aka "Integration" in salesspeak), "standardization" (with desktop systems) and the delusion (which is interestingly put forward by both pro- and anti Microsoft people) that "sooner or later" Microsoft will dominate every market and so it's better to bet on the winner.
However, with years of IIS being pretty stagnant or slowly losing marketshare, this delusion cannot be sustained forever, more and more people realize that OSS is not just a fad and is here to stay.
Also with each round of forced upgrades on the IIS-side, some jump ship.
It will probably will take a decade or two, but then IIS-fans will find themselves in the very situation they wanted to avoid: Being a tiny minority, fighting with bad 3rd party support and being frowned upon.
In some countries it already happened: In Germany, IIS runs only 5.56% of domains (down from over 20% 5 years ago) - cheap German webhosters don't offer Windows anymore at all, some webhosters charge extra for Windows and only few charge the same (however those are usually the most expensive webhosters anyway)
But actually that's good news because Firefox still has a lot of potential to grow. :-)
You have to answer that question, you bought a Windows-Mobile phone.
I have absolutely no problems with my Treo600, friends of mine have similar "bloated" phones by Nokia and Samsung and they all work fine without glitches.