I have been a Microsoft intern the past two summers. I've also accepted a full time position with Microsoft once I graduate from college.
Some interns have much better experiences than others. I would say a vast majority have a great time, both professionally and socially. I am one of them, although I know some that didn't have a good time at all.
Work is work as an intern. You're expected to gear up fairly quickly, but not so as to stress you out. You *are* an intern - Microsoft is not going to give you a job that is 100% mission critical. However, as an intern, you *can* make significant contribution to your group's products (You can find my name in the Xbox credits:). It's a slight ego booster.
I saw a post that said you're expected to pull 55+ hour weeks. This isn't true. You are required to complete your assignments. If that means you need to work your ass off, and you want a good review, then that's what you have to do. If you're an awesome coder and can get it done in 20 hours, good for you. Go drink the rest of the time:)
Corporate culture is great. Everyone is supportive about things like personal time, social lives, time off, etc. Morale is really high at Microsoft. Through the roof. The company just treats you right in many different ways.
Being a Microsoft intern was the first time I had a consistent, fulfilling social life too. Pretty much every weekend was a party and having fun around Seattle.
The party at Bill's house is getting to be a bit cliche. I suspect Bill doesn't really want to do it anymore, but he's expected to now. There are so many interns at MS that there are several parties over the course of a week.
On the other hand, it's pretty damn sweet to get to see the inside of Bill's house.
I hate people that talk about Word document bloat as if they know exactly what's going on when Word saves a document. "Look! A one word document takes 20KB! Word is crap!"
What people don't realize is that there's quite a bit of formatting information in there. Remember stuff like page size, margins, fonts used (sometimes fonts are compiled directly into the document - depending on your settings - so that when you send it to someone, they don't need those fonts to view it correctly). That's just global formatting. What about stuff like paragraph formatting? Font styles/sizes?
All of it can't come for 0 bytes, and maybe all of the above doesn't account for all 20KB, but I probably haven't touched on half the stuff that's there that people take for granted with a modern word processor.
You should remember that id's titles are published by Activision, which does have the dollars to market their top titles. So, id isn't really all that independent after all. Independent game developers are those that basically only have the resources required to make the game, not promote, distribute, market it in any way.
The article points out that WinDVD 3.0 is able to play the ASF files encoded by Media Center Edition. The reason this is true is that WinDVD looks for the codecs installed on your system when it runs into a format it does not have native support for. This is evident when playing DivX files in WinDVD. I find it hard to believe that Anandtech wouldn't realize this simple fact in its reporting.
The display resolution of standard Television is NOT 640x480. It is (approximately - I've forgotten exact numbers) 500 'lines' of data.
However, plasma display screens are (in my humble opinion) NOT meant for standard television at all. HDTV perhaps, but definitely not standard broadcast signals.
These screens have been used for high definition displays at conferences and such before. Mostly because they provide awesome resolution with very good viewability (usually around the 160 degree range).
Now, these screens are finding consumer-level uses in home theater and video games. What you want is a source that actually has the resolution the plasma screen can display. These sources come from devices such as a modern progressive scan DVD player and Xbox, GameCube, and to a lesser extent PS2 (it only supports 480i/p to my knowledge).
Signals that support these resolutions are encoded in a format called "Component" (or YPrPb). A lot of people know about "RCA" and "S-Video". Component looks exactly like RCA (except it's color coded differently and it encodes high definition signals). Most good plasmas also come with a VGA connector for exactly that - XGA/UXGA/SVGA/VGA/etc.
Computers are a also a good use for these screens, but I haven't seen them used for standard computer desktops at all yet.
If you're putting together a home theater, you definitely want a plasma screen (see http://plasmatvbuyingguide.com for reviews 'n stuff).
The parent post doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.
So the MAME project uses the Xbox Development Kit to develop MAME for the Xbox. What this means is one of the following:
- They bought a proper license for the XDK. The ability to buy one requires an approved title.
OR - They illegally pirated a copy of the XDK.
Since the MAME project had a working version on a devkit box (the clear case Xboxes), I'd be willing to bet that a programmer at a games shop that has an approved Xbox title took it upon himself to port MAME.
Once MAME was developed, the only thing required to get it running on commercial Xboxes was either pressing a true DVD-9 and getting the code signed as an approved Xbox title, or using a mod-chip and burning the software onto a CD.
The first option wouldn't happen - MAME is not a title that would show the power of Xbox, nor would it be something the average consumer would want.
The legal problem with the second option is that the ported MAME software uses Microsoft's intellectual property. When building software for Xbox, your application is linked against several static libraries that provide the base software services (file systems, memory management, etc.)
Hence, Microsoft really does have the legal right to stop distribution of MAME in this case.
Don't ask me about the mod chip's legal case - I don't know about it at all.
Well duh... You make it sound like Microsoft is the only one doing it that way. The console games industry has always used this business model ever since NES.
Hardware is always "compatible" with OpenGL and DirectX. When writing an OpenGL or D3D driver, you basically provide a layer of abstraction that goes from the 3D API down to your own chip's instructions and data formats.
When nVIDIA and ATI say that their hardware is fully API compliant, they mean that their hardware implements all the required features of the API in hardware, and their drivers provide the abstraction to compute everything in hardware too.
I'm sure nVIDIA and ATI have patents on their hardware - this is entirely expected. But just as there are multiple pieces of code that produce the same effect, there are multiple designs of hardware that generate the same output.
Also, pixel shaders and vertex shaders are two different things - they happen at two different stages of the rendering pipeline. I'm sure nVIDIA has patents relating to them, but DirectX and OpenGL have their own specifications for shaders which any hardware developer can implement.
This is no longer a problem - the popup is dynamically generated from directories on the drive. Also, Litestep popups now use the shell namespace, which means so-called Special Folders (Start Menu, My Documents, etc.) are also accessible.
Lots of problems are like this. Namely, every NP-Complete problem is like this.
You can prove that a problem is NP-Complete by restating the problem as a polynomial-time manipulation of another problem. Sort of like "if the red marbles in this problem are considered the nodes of the tree in this other problem, then I can say this because I know something about red marbles."
In this case, n > 3 is simply a problem that can be stated as a manipulation of n = 3.
I had a TI-92 once. It was stolen a week or two afterward (this was in high school). I switched to an HP-48G the next week. There's something to be said for small and powerful rather than big and conspicuous. Too bad HP is out of the game now.
... is not Linux. While there is the PS2 Linux kit out there that lets you run Linux on your PS2, the operating system used by the games is a proprietary one, with no relation to Linux.
The PS2 development kits are modded PCs that run Linux and emulate a PS2 environment.
My suitemates and I went to the midnight showing of Lord of the Rings yesterday at a local theater. I was totally impressed by the movie's accuracy. The Gates of Gondor were exactly as I had imagined them when reading the book. Wow.
However, two things made my experience not the best it could have been:
1. I half expected Elrond to say "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson"
2. The audio in our showing became out of synch with the movie during the battle at the Gates of Gondor. I can't believe that I had to sit through the death of Boromir with the audio lagging by 5 seconds!
Actually, TECMO just announced a law suit against some people that are distributing a porn version of their game Dead or Alive 2 (the Dreamcast game). Most of the girls in that game are quite popular among even American gamers.
I've got a product that sold a lot of units really quickly!
Note that this is the same way SEGA started out with Dreamcast. Dreamcast destroyed the previous record for 1st day sales when it came out (9/9/99 by the way). Nintendo is saying they've done the same, basically.
Popularity in the video game market is way more than preliminary sales figures. We'll see who really has the best games about a year from now.
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Dude, it's $20 per YEAR. I dunno where you're getting $50 per month. That would be pretty ridiculous.
I have been a Microsoft intern the past two summers. I've also accepted a full time position with Microsoft once I graduate from college.
:). It's a slight ego booster.
:)
Some interns have much better experiences than others. I would say a vast majority have a great time, both professionally and socially. I am one of them, although I know some that didn't have a good time at all.
Work is work as an intern. You're expected to gear up fairly quickly, but not so as to stress you out. You *are* an intern - Microsoft is not going to give you a job that is 100% mission critical. However, as an intern, you *can* make significant contribution to your group's products (You can find my name in the Xbox credits
I saw a post that said you're expected to pull 55+ hour weeks. This isn't true. You are required to complete your assignments. If that means you need to work your ass off, and you want a good review, then that's what you have to do. If you're an awesome coder and can get it done in 20 hours, good for you. Go drink the rest of the time
Corporate culture is great. Everyone is supportive about things like personal time, social lives, time off, etc. Morale is really high at Microsoft. Through the roof. The company just treats you right in many different ways.
Being a Microsoft intern was the first time I had a consistent, fulfilling social life too. Pretty much every weekend was a party and having fun around Seattle.
The party at Bill's house is getting to be a bit cliche. I suspect Bill doesn't really want to do it anymore, but he's expected to now. There are so many interns at MS that there are several parties over the course of a week.
On the other hand, it's pretty damn sweet to get to see the inside of Bill's house.
For those who don't know, Bill Gates and Paul Allen made a traffic metering device back in the day, and they were pretty successful at selling it too.
No reason it couldn't be used today, is there?
I hate people that talk about Word document bloat as if they know exactly what's going on when Word saves a document. "Look! A one word document takes 20KB! Word is crap!"
What people don't realize is that there's quite a bit of formatting information in there. Remember stuff like page size, margins, fonts used (sometimes fonts are compiled directly into the document - depending on your settings - so that when you send it to someone, they don't need those fonts to view it correctly). That's just global formatting. What about stuff like paragraph formatting? Font styles/sizes?
All of it can't come for 0 bytes, and maybe all of the above doesn't account for all 20KB, but I probably haven't touched on half the stuff that's there that people take for granted with a modern word processor.
Mod chips with modified boot loader images allow harddrives with up to 137GB of storage.
You should remember that id's titles are published by Activision, which does have the dollars to market their top titles. So, id isn't really all that independent after all. Independent game developers are those that basically only have the resources required to make the game, not promote, distribute, market it in any way.
The article points out that WinDVD 3.0 is able to play the ASF files encoded by Media Center Edition. The reason this is true is that WinDVD looks for the codecs installed on your system when it runs into a format it does not have native support for. This is evident when playing DivX files in WinDVD. I find it hard to believe that Anandtech wouldn't realize this simple fact in its reporting.
The display resolution of standard Television is NOT 640x480. It is (approximately - I've forgotten exact numbers) 500 'lines' of data.
However, plasma display screens are (in my humble opinion) NOT meant for standard television at all. HDTV perhaps, but definitely not standard broadcast signals.
These screens have been used for high definition displays at conferences and such before. Mostly because they provide awesome resolution with very good viewability (usually around the 160 degree range).
Now, these screens are finding consumer-level uses in home theater and video games. What you want is a source that actually has the resolution the plasma screen can display. These sources come from devices such as a modern progressive scan DVD player and Xbox, GameCube, and to a lesser extent PS2 (it only supports 480i/p to my knowledge).
Signals that support these resolutions are encoded in a format called "Component" (or YPrPb). A lot of people know about "RCA" and "S-Video". Component looks exactly like RCA (except it's color coded differently and it encodes high definition signals). Most good plasmas also come with a VGA connector for exactly that - XGA/UXGA/SVGA/VGA/etc.
Computers are a also a good use for these screens, but I haven't seen them used for standard computer desktops at all yet.
If you're putting together a home theater, you definitely want a plasma screen (see http://plasmatvbuyingguide.com for reviews 'n stuff).
The parent post doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.
So the MAME project uses the Xbox Development Kit to develop MAME for the Xbox. What this means is one of the following:
- They bought a proper license for the XDK. The ability to buy one requires an approved title.
OR
- They illegally pirated a copy of the XDK.
Since the MAME project had a working version on a devkit box (the clear case Xboxes), I'd be willing to bet that a programmer at a games shop that has an approved Xbox title took it upon himself to port MAME.
Once MAME was developed, the only thing required to get it running on commercial Xboxes was either pressing a true DVD-9 and getting the code signed as an approved Xbox title, or using a mod-chip and burning the software onto a CD.
The first option wouldn't happen - MAME is not a title that would show the power of Xbox, nor would it be something the average consumer would want.
The legal problem with the second option is that the ported MAME software uses Microsoft's intellectual property. When building software for Xbox, your application is linked against several static libraries that provide the base software services (file systems, memory management, etc.)
Hence, Microsoft really does have the legal right to stop distribution of MAME in this case.
Don't ask me about the mod chip's legal case - I don't know about it at all.
Well duh... You make it sound like Microsoft is the only one doing it that way. The console games industry has always used this business model ever since NES.
C|Net owns the com.com domain. They centralize around that. News.com is news.com.com, etc.
Hardware is always "compatible" with OpenGL and DirectX. When writing an OpenGL or D3D driver, you basically provide a layer of abstraction that goes from the 3D API down to your own chip's instructions and data formats.
When nVIDIA and ATI say that their hardware is fully API compliant, they mean that their hardware implements all the required features of the API in hardware, and their drivers provide the abstraction to compute everything in hardware too.
I'm sure nVIDIA and ATI have patents on their hardware - this is entirely expected. But just as there are multiple pieces of code that produce the same effect, there are multiple designs of hardware that generate the same output.
Also, pixel shaders and vertex shaders are two different things - they happen at two different stages of the rendering pipeline. I'm sure nVIDIA has patents relating to them, but DirectX and OpenGL have their own specifications for shaders which any hardware developer can implement.
This is no longer a problem - the popup is dynamically generated from directories on the drive. Also, Litestep popups now use the shell namespace, which means so-called Special Folders (Start Menu, My Documents, etc.) are also accessible.
My friend did this our freshman year of college right before finals week.
At one point, he crashed for an entire 4 hour block, and then, he fell asleep DURING our physics final!
If you're not already accustomed to the schedule, I would doubt it's a good thing to try just before a critical time of your daily life.
Yeah, and for those who hadn't read the article... Seamus had hit the pause button.
Lots of problems are like this. Namely, every NP-Complete problem is like this.
You can prove that a problem is NP-Complete by restating the problem as a polynomial-time manipulation of another problem. Sort of like "if the red marbles in this problem are considered the nodes of the tree in this other problem, then I can say this because I know something about red marbles."
In this case, n > 3 is simply a problem that can be stated as a manipulation of n = 3.
Interesting that Brian Behlendorf (co-founder of Apache) posted to that thread as well.
Now I don't have to worry about how much money I'm going to keep pouring into buying the rest of the series on DVD.
I had a TI-92 once. It was stolen a week or two afterward (this was in high school). I switched to an HP-48G the next week. There's something to be said for small and powerful rather than big and conspicuous. Too bad HP is out of the game now.
... is not Linux. While there is the PS2 Linux kit out there that lets you run Linux on your PS2, the operating system used by the games is a proprietary one, with no relation to Linux.
The PS2 development kits are modded PCs that run Linux and emulate a PS2 environment.
It's certainly not a spoiler to anyone that's read the book...
My suitemates and I went to the midnight showing of Lord of the Rings yesterday at a local theater. I was totally impressed by the movie's accuracy. The Gates of Gondor were exactly as I had imagined them when reading the book. Wow.
However, two things made my experience not the best it could have been:
1. I half expected Elrond to say "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson"
2. The audio in our showing became out of synch with the movie during the battle at the Gates of Gondor. I can't believe that I had to sit through the death of Boromir with the audio lagging by 5 seconds!
Actually, TECMO just announced a law suit against some people that are distributing a porn version of their game Dead or Alive 2 (the Dreamcast game). Most of the girls in that game are quite popular among even American gamers.
I've got a product that sold a lot of units really quickly!
Note that this is the same way SEGA started out with Dreamcast. Dreamcast destroyed the previous record for 1st day sales when it came out (9/9/99 by the way). Nintendo is saying they've done the same, basically.
Popularity in the video game market is way more than preliminary sales figures. We'll see who really has the best games about a year from now.
/me predicts Xbox. Let the flames begin.
Who do you think is better at making development software, Nintendo whos been doing it for 20 years, or Microsoft?
Well, BASIC *was* one of Microsoft's first products, and they've been doing development tools ever since... almost 25 years ago...
But enough nitpicking...