Please, next time, don't expect someone who's responding to you to go back and perform a check on every single other comment you've ever left in order to ensure that you're being sarcastic.
The tone was very much in line with many other comments - nothing to set it apart.
Other than your history, of which I know nothing, as there are far too many people registered on/. for me to remember who's who (except for people I actually know, and they consitute a very small portion of the readership).
If "way too many Slashdotters take [you] too seriously," then consider that the problem isn't in their lack of DD - it's your presumption that we've all either read your earlier works, or research every/. member before responding.
If there were only a few dozen people here, that'd make a little sense.
With how many people there are, though, it's ridiculous to assume that we all know who you are.
"Google should just announce that it has fully joined the ranks of Corporate America and disavows its founding principles."
I hate to sound like Mr. Rudepants, but how could anyone be so naive?
I know I could be nicer, but it's amazing to me, after all these years, that anybody could still be thinking as this person does.
Do all of you *really* think Google is in this for the benefit of the world? That they're a bunch of philanthropists, going around and doing good for everybody?
In my time at Microsoft, I've observed many instances of insular thought - to the point that it's flat out bad for the company.
But, the blinders you have on are, somehow, even worse.
It's a fantasy to think that Google is, or ever has been, anything other than another powerful player in software (well, advertising, really, but they sell their advertising through software).
It's a company! It exists to make money! They'll do whatever they can get away with to meet that goal!
I try not to comment... I try to remain politic...
But, comments like the one to which I'm responding, as well as many others I read here today, are indicative of an *astounding* detachment from reality.
You're all being played by Google. As long as you believe, or try to believe, that Google is somehow different from the rest of the major players, you're just allowing yourselves to be taken advantage of, and I'm adding a clause so that I don't have to end my sentence with a preposition.
"Those people won't live long enough to breed. (Or at least I hope)."
While pulmonary embolism *is* a risk that people who sit for long periods must face, I'm quite certain that most gamers are being smart and taking yoga breaks every forty-five minutes.
Also, as long as you aren't playing forty-hour long sessions in dark, cramped, smoky Korean cyber cafes, then you're probably all right:)
I'm going to reply even though your comment has been marked as "Flamebait." While that ranking might apply to the tone, something tells me that you're just angry and showing it, rather than looking to have a pointless argument.
So...
"As your greed becomes so obvious, don't be surprised when your victims (or sorry, ex-customers) dump you like old laundry."
I'm not sure where this is coming from. Every company on the planet that has a product to sell has some unhappy customers. This is very normal, and I think most of us inside Microsoft are realistic enough not to expect everyone to be happy with what we offer. Some things just can't be helped.
"Everything about the 'new' live is designed for extra-cost after the initial purchase."
That is just simply incorrect. Users are given (for free) a "Silver" account that gives them access to email, voicemail, chat, and special content. There is also the "Gold" account, which costs right around four dollars a month (if you buy a year at a time), which has more perks, but it's entirely optional.
"Things which should be free cost ridiculous amounts, like the 'Skins'."
We provide the marketplace - other people (companies *and* independents) use it to sell their wares. What they want to charge isn't something we control. If one company wants to charge twenty-five cents (is that a "ridiculous amount" of money?), while another wants to charge fifty, that's their business.
Most of the content on the marketplace is actually *extremely* cheap. The most expensive items right now are the downloadable games, and even they hardly cost anything. I don't know what the exact dollar amount is, but I think you can get a game for less than five bucks (again, is that "ridiculous"?).
"Why is it that you can't remove creditcard information once it is entered?"
I'm not aware of this being a problem. Do you have a link you could provide so that I could read up on it? TIA.
"How long until missing levels from $60 games start showing up as purchasable content?"
I have no idea. I imagine someone would have to start producing and selling incomplete games first, so it might never happen.
"Extra cars or characters for extra-cost purchase to complete otherwise unattainable portions of a game?"
Which games in particular are you talking about? I'm not aware of any games that are out for the console which can't be beaten without "[e]xtra cars or characters." If this really is an issue, then let me know, and I'll let the right people know internally.
"As if you guys at Microsoft could explain.NET to begin with."
OK - there's been some bad communication on the subject:)
".NET (aside from a unification API) is a platform to move applications 'online', and guess who wants to be the tollbooth in the middle? Oh yeah, Microsoft! The console Live service is obviously a big market test towards that end."
Interesting.
So, when I was playing LineWars over the modem over ten years ago, was it an attempt on behalf of the developers to "test" the ability to deliver and charge for services?
I think you're making some rather unfounded accusations here.
Xbox Live isn't a "test" for anything. If it is, then it certainly has been going on for a long while - people have been paying for the service since it began.
"The article stated you Microsoft guys want 50% of 360 customers on Live. Yes, I'm afraid it is ridiculous, especially when you are moving to the cell-phone model of charging extra for everything."
Good point. I wish somebody on the team would have considered how few people use cell phones before moving to this model;)
"I'm hardly slamming the machine itself."
So you like it! Oh, good.
"But the greedy, extra-charge everything on Live"
Again, there is a lot of free content on Live - and free services. You're just flat out wrong here.
What many people seem to be forgetting is that current generations of kids are interacting in a way that's totally different from what many of us experienced growing up.
If you had told me when I was a kid that I should be chatting with friends through VOIP while playing Space Quest, I don't think I would have given you the time of day. In fact, I'd probably try to urinate on you or something. It just wasn't part of my world.
Now, though, kids spent a *lot* of time getting together online - through IM, myspace, games, and other technologies. It's a fact of life for them, and it's only going to grow for the coming generations.
To say that the strategy is "Absolutely flawed" is to look at one segment of the gaming population without considering where *everything* is trending, and that's toward online activity.
I've seen a lot of arguments here of the "Well, I don't like the idea, so it must suck dog balls" variety, but you have to remember that there is a universe outside your own - there are plenty of people who *do* live huge chunks of their social lives through online interactions.
"Briliantly they are testing the idea in their lackluster gaming system before moving it over to their applications."
If you had any idea what you were talking about, you might have a different attitude.
Spend some time on Xbox Live before you slam it. Users have access to a lot of resources for *free* that are pretty nifty. Like being able to download 720p movie trailers, new content for games, game demos, and more.
I *work* for the company, and I was a skeptic before the 360, but the new system made me a convert. I didn't see the value in Xbox Live for the original console, but it's a very different, much more integrated system now, and I don't *have* to pay to take advantage of it.
That said, I did wind up paying so that I could have the privilege of losing online races to children who are ten million times better at gaming than I am, but payment isn't a requirement, and this isn't a "test" for online services. The Xbox team has about as much to do with the Office team as Google does with Yahoo - they aren't sitting around, coordinating their strategies, or their wardrobes, or whatever. Much of the industry is moving toward services in one way or another, and this is the Xbox team's approach.
And there's nothing wrong with it. The Xbox team, through Live, is providing a service that otherwise wouldn't be available (being able to download updates to the Xbox emulator, for example, is something that would be a pain in the ass without Live).
What's great is that people *do* have a choice. You can rail all you want against Microsoft, but remember that it's *customers* who *want* these services who are paying for them - nobody is being forced.
"Taking my online gaming and trying to make it a 'social interaction' *IS* the wrong approach."
That's a pretty heavy statement, and I haven't seen a convincing argument in favor of it (certainly not from the article).
While the social interaction might not appeal to *you*, it clearly appeals to others. I've been spending a couple hours each night on Xbox Live, and I'm amazed at the number of people who just want to start conversations while racing around in PGR3. It's odd, to be sure, when you meet up with someone and try to get to know them over a two or three minute period, but it happens, and people seem to like it.
There are even patterns that emerge - little de-facto social protocols. While in the lobby, waiting for a game, the most common way to start a conversation is for someone to put on his best "tough voice" and say, "Whassssssuuuuup." Then other people start to chime in, the faux toughness is dropped, and a real interaction ensues.
I found it odd at first, but now I think it's pretty cool. I've started to encounter a lot of the same people each night, and it's actually pretty fun getting to know them through these very short interactions. It's almost like speed dating for friends.
The fact is, the kids who grow up with this generation of gaming aren't going to look at it the way previous generations did. Growing up, I was happy to play adventure games by myself in a basement, but kids now want to be connected, and Microsoft is providing the tools with which to do it.
"Blanket generalizations are almost always wrong."
Yours is an exception, I suppose:)
"Wow, this 'analyst' just shredded his credibility with that whopper."
Agreed. The thing that I don't understand from TFA is just how it is that he's supposed to know anything about what gamers want. In other words, how is he an authority? If there was a bio, I missed it.
I'd also be interested in seeing the data he consulted to arrive at that opinion. It sounds a bit more like armchair psychology to me than an informed, numbers-driven position.
While I sometimes play games to escape, I've also been learning to play for social interaction, so from a personal point of view, I just don't see what he's getting at.
When saying that Microsoft's strategy is "Absolutely flawed," he really ought to have provided further explanation. And, perhaps he did - in a case like this, the journalist might have been going for sensation rather than substance. I'd like to see the quotes that *weren't* inserted in the article.
"If it isn't already obvious, this is Microsoft's attempted way of extracting monthly revenue out of their customers."
Oh. dear. I had no idea.
How awful.
I quit... Do you hear me, Gates? I QUIT!!!
Taking money from customers - what will we think of next?
"You can see it in the way they are now re-attempting to push web services like Office Live and.NET."
Uh....NET isn't a web service. If you're going to slam our stuff, you could at least get your story straight.
"...they are pushing way too hard with this generation of console, especially since they never garnered more than 10% or so of original Xbox players."
First off, that "10% or so of original Xbox players" is impressive. It's easy to say that it was "only" a tenth of the potential, but how many people own original Xbox systems? 10% of *that* number isn't too shabby (you *did* read the article, right?).
Also, the live story with the 360 is totally different. While it builds on the existing system, the overall experience has changed greatly, and hopefully it won't take gamers much effort to realize it.
I work for the company, and I didn't care about Xbox Live for the first console. It didn't have a "feel" that attracted me. After getting my 360, though, that changed, and I've been spending every night getting my ass kicked in PGR3 by ten year olds from Alabama - and I'm quite enjoying it.
Seriously, yo - a lot of good people put a lot of work into the Xbox, the 360, and Xbox Live. There's nothing wrong with slamming a technology, or a company, or whatever, but you could at least do so from an informed point of view.
"I will agree that things have changed since 95, 98 and the abomination that was ME, but that doesn't mean all the problems are fixed."
Well, "good" is the best any software will ever get. It will never be perfect. Even Apple, which owns the hardware and software stack (and therefore doesn't have to deal with our situation, which is trying to support every last component on the planet), regularly releases buggy products. I've been purchasing Apples since OS X was released, and I have yet to encounter *one* version of OS X where "all the problems [were] fixed."
It just doesn't happen. Even though the later releases are typically very stable, they're never perfect.
We're no different from our competitors in that respect, presumably because our competitors are human and fallible.
"Things may be different and improved, but that does not necessarily mean they've reached an acceptible level of quality. A car where the wheels fall off "only" once a year for only 5% of users is still pretty crappy in my book."
Are we talking about cars or operating systems? And, while we're at it, why 5%?
It's a very different story. Frankly, if someone could produce a general purpose OS that didn't blue screen (freeze (core dump (just completely fucking crash))) for only 5% of users, and only once a year, it'd be a hell of a good job.
Anyway, since you seem to want to talk about cars, let's accept that a car crashing because its wheels fall off is very different from a computer crashing because of its OS. When cars crash, people get hurt. When computers crash, people reboot. Not even remotely the same.
"It would also help if leadership at Microsoft spent less time trying to figure out how to "bury" competitors and more time producing quality product."
It might surprise you to learn that the people who build the OS aren't the same people who work on business strategy.
When your products power some ungodly huge quantity of the world's computers, you're going to hit problems, plain and simple. And, when something goes wrong, people will make a big deal about it. When my Apple crashes, nobody cares. I used to use Linux on a daily basis, and when X shit itself (which it did often), I restarted it. The only different between an Apple or a Linux box crapping out and a Windows box crapping out is that people, for fashion or whatever other reason I don't understand, get really vocal about it. If you want something to get vocal about, then try spending an afternoon with Apple tech support, listening to them refuse to work with you because you have a computing infrastructure that includes a non-Apple item. Or, try being a "normal" user and having to worry about configuring scan line modes in some weird windowing environment's config file.
There's plenty to get vocal about on all sides. But, Apple has its parishioners, and Linux has its geeks. Parishioners tend to defend their church at all costs, and Linux geeks tend to be technical enough that messing with config files by hand isn't a big deal.
Windows services the Rest of the World, so we get a bigger chunk of the vocally upset.
"BTW, thanks for that nice power cord for my first generation Xbox."
You wanted to talk about cars earlier. Tell you what - go figure out which major auto manufacturers in the past ten years have had recalls, and which ones haven't. I think you'll find that part of reality is that not everything goes according to plan.
"Look... deep down, most engineers want to make good products, but that doesn't matter if management won't let them."
How much do you *know* about management at Microsoft? How much do you *know* about what they're allowing to happen? How much do you *know* about our techs?
I'm serious. I'd love to know what your sources are.
"Even if you have a commitment to quality, the company you work for has demonstrated time and time again that they are only interested in the bare minimum."
"That's a pretty bold claim, with a very tiny amount of anecdotal evidence to back it up."
Internally, we have evidence that isn't all that anecdotal. Believe it or not, MS is aware of this little BSOD issue, and it's a source of concern for obvious reasons.
What have people learned? That the *vast* majority of BSODs are caused by crappy third party video drivers.
The parent of the parent has a good point about crappy hardware. One of the nice things about Windows is that, for years, it has had extremely broad support for hardware. The downside of that is that there is no way to keep tabs on every single board going into every single PC.
Anyway, BSODs actually have decreased over the years. While I realize the evidence is anecdotal, and while I personally don't care for anecdotal evidence, I also haven't had a BSOD in years, and I work for the company - I'm using Windows all day, every day, on many machines (I also run a couple Apples, but that's a different discussion with different problems).
It's really too bad BSODs used to be so ubiquitous. It obviously hurt the company's image, but things have changed. Granted, it might be a few years before that's common knowledge, but it'll happen (or, it preferably *won't* happen - I'd rather see silence due to a total lack of BSODs across the board rather than people suddenly waking up and saying, "Hey! It actually works! Hurrah!").
I can understand why, based on previous experiences, people like yourself still have strong feelings about BSODs, but, again, things are different now.
"Even the the original XBox could be hacked into such a system, suggesting that MS deliberately crippled their new console."
If you want to do something with the 360 for which it wasn't designed, and if that something turns out not to work, then it isn't a matter of the device being "crippled."
You don't say your car is crippled when you drive it into a lake and find that it doesn't float quite as well as you were hoping. You just get out (if you can), walk up to shore, and say, "Hey - guess it's not one of those floaty car things."
"Because face it folks, the CPU cycles available to them just ain't there to fully emulate a P733 in software."
They don't actually need to emulate a PIII.
One thing that Microsoft is good at (and I'm biased because I work for 'em) is creating nice dev tools.
APIs like DirectX (us) and OpenGL (the other white meat) were made for this kind of scenario. If you think about it, nearly any PC game would have to be "ported" from system to system because of differing hardware (sound and video cards, etc.). Having these APIs completely changes anything since they sit between the games and the hardware, basically making ATI and NVidia (and all those other companies) cards look the same to the developers.
Because of DirectX, you and I could potentially choose from the same catalog of games for PCs even though we have boxes manufactured with components from many different vendors.
Take this over to the 360 - Like I said, MS is good at dev tools. I might as well add that, whatever the response might typically be on/., we're also pretty damned good at ensuring backward compatability (we kept DOS and 16 bit Windows APIs alive for quite a while, and we're keeping the Win32 bits kicking in Vista).
To get around the problem of trying to emulate an entire CPU, I'm expecting to see a compatability layer that will make the 360 appear in some ways like an Xbox - a sort of DirectX (Xbox) to XNA (360) layer.
If you can just replace calls, then you don't have to try to emulate the hardware (WINE works in a similar way - it's not an attempt to emulate Windows, but actually an attempt to recreate the Windows APIs).
Of course, as you pointed out, we're probably going to see a mix of methods used to create the emulation, but whatever it is, it *is* working:)
Also, I have no idea what I'm talking about, so ignore me. I'm probably just adding to the noise, but I'm curious about all of this as well...
"Sure they would invest whatever effort were required to get Halo running, even if it were basically recompiling the whole set of binaries, but how much effort will go into obscure games?"
From the article I read (linked to from the/. post), it doesn't sound like they're pushing new binaries down to the machines. It's just a 5MB emulator that works for the entire list of games.
One of the reasons you're not seeing a longer list yet is that the team is verifying each game by hand before it gets added. This could obviously take a while, and we're (hopefully) going to see more games added to the list.
Whatever happens, though, this is a good thing. I didn't expect to see backward compatability since it's definitely *not* typically part of the package with consoles. The PS2 managed, but it was the exception to the rule.
Maybe Sony changed the scene for everybody, though - maybe emulation will be standard on major consoles from here on out.
Which would be cool. I'd like to think the Revolution will still play my GC games...
"From what i understand with most emulators, it takes roughly 5-10 times the processing power to emulate one piece of hardware on another. but i remember reading years ago that since the xbox was basically a pc, that 1:1 emulation should be possible and not require a 6 ghz pc to run games at full speed."
You have to keep in mind that the Xbox 360 is much closer to being a Mac rather than a PC, so it isn't as simple as it sounds.
However, from what few technical details were given in the associated article, it sounds like the emulation is taking place in part at the API level, which is to say that they're wrapping calls to the 360 to make them look like calls to the original Xbox. This is a total guess, though, since they really didn't give us a lot to go on in the interview.
If that's the case, though, then it's a sort of hybrid emulator - not so much replacing the hardware as much as adding a compatability layer to the software that handles calls from the games to the machine.
Again, though, this is just total shot-in-the-dark guessing.
"i haven't looked for awhile but was curious as to how this statement was flawed."
If we were talking about a game that was being released for the Xbox (original) and the PC, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. I forget what the exact details are, but from what I've read, the Xbox has its own custom version of DirectX, which means that it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to port games that used DirectX on the PC.
I think a lot of the difficulties would be in dealing with the different interfaces (mice/keyboards vs. controllers) and environments (TVs vs. monitors, etc.).
But, and just to make it absolutely clear, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about:)
"From the looks of it, it may not be true emulation, it might simply be a new binary of the game recompiled for the new system."
It's emulation.
1) If you were you recompile the games, you'd have to release new media - this is supposed to work by sticking your original Xbox CDs in the drive and go
2) It says in the associated article that it's a software emulator
"The claim of taking a huge paycut. Yeah. riiiiight."
It's actually quite common to take a pay cut to come to MS.
I don't think I can legally post figures, but my yearly income shrank by roughly 40%.
That said, I also have a *lot* of benefits. I have real health care, real vacation time, nice company hardware, access to shitloads of software for free, discounts at hotels/restaurants/this/that, etc, and all while I'm being paid to travel around and talk tech with developers.
I also don't have to deal with the IRS on a quarterly basis, and that alone was worth the cost of admission. Doing paperwork for your own stupid corporation is a pain in the ass (unless you're a Vogon and really dig that kind of thing).
I make less, but I'm getting a hell of a lot more out of life now than I was before.
So, yeah. Skepticism understood, but it's the truth.
"Are you doing that right now by reading and posting to/. during business/working hours? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I really want to know. It used to be a conspiracy theory that Microsoft employees would astroturf slashdot in an attempt to skew community discussion to be more favorable towards them, I'm just wondering if there's any kernel of truth to that."
I understand your skepticism.
First off, these aren't my work hours. I'm a "remote" employee, and my hours are, except when I'm with customers, completely flexible. A lot of my work gets done long after the sun has gone down and before it's come back up.
As for astroturfing - I have no doubt that it happens, although I suspect that it's more product teams coming out and trying to counter some of the FUD rather than trying to unfairly sway conversation. But, this is all my opinion.
Not only have I not been asked to do this, I've actually received notes from product leads (and others) saying, "Hey - this is great and all, but you're speaking on behalf of our team, and you aren't even on it. Leave this to us." While I respect that, I have a hard time remaining quiet when nobody else is saying anything.
Talk smack - that's fine - but don't lump *all* of us in to one big package and label it "evil."
Believe me - there's more than enough ammunition on every side of this multifaceted fence (OK - the "both sides of the fence" analogy kind of breaks down when the fence has more than one side, but whatever).
Oracle people could talk about MySQL people could talk about SQL Server people could talk about PostgreSQL people could talk about MySQL people could talk about SQL Server people could talk about Oracle people could talk about...
It's a fifteen headed snake trying to eat its own fifteen tails. Just a big clusterfuck mess of people trying to accuse every organization of being filled with assholes just because, as you might expect from *any* cross section of a general human demographic, *some* of the people are.
Also, I'd just like to point that that, if I *were* officially being asked to do this (astroturfing), then I might also be encouraged to shy away from words like "clusterfuck."
"You've made a sale, but that doesn't mean you haven't lost a sale."
Sure, but given the choice between 50% of something and 0% of that thing, I'll take the 50%.
I might aspire to a greater portion, but a partial win is significantly better than a total loss. Look at the excitement in the FireFox community every time.000003% market share is gained by the browser. It's not that significant, but, shit, if I were them, *I'd* be excited, too. It's much better than gaining no ground at all.
Anyway, the customer is the priority. If I'm working with someone who has standardized on MySQL but wants to use ASP.NET to serve web apps, then I'm going to help that person.
Am I going to plug SQL Server along the way? Yeah, sure, just as an OSS consultant would probably push for PHP instead of ASP.NET. That's normal - it's competition. Even if you're like me and have an appreciation for both sides, there's a bias toward one of those sides. My bias is toward MS.
But, I'm not the slightest bit interested in disrupting someone's business so that three more MS SQL Server licenses get sold and replace an established core of MySQL DB servers - they probably already have people who understand MySQL and work well with it. In that case, a switch might create some short term issues for the customer. If MySQL is a problem for them, then that's different, but if it's working out, then...
The idea behind all this tech, whether it's proprietary or F/OSS is to *help people*. That involves a relationship, and relationships, all of them, are built on compromise. If that compromise means that we can get ASP.NET hooked up to their MySQL servers, then that's that. A win for a customer is a win for us.
"I think it's fair to mantain that any situation where any product (FOSS or otherwise) is used where a Microsoft product could have been used is a situation where Microsoft would rather the other product didn't exist."
Would we *prefer* that you exclusively use our products? Of course.
Think about going out to a restaurant while holding a cup of coffee you bought someplace else (I do this often because I like different vendors for different products). You'll get the evil-eye from your server if you try to keep the coffee on the table, in full view of everyone else. That server would much rather make the sale of a drink from *his/her* establishment.
That, too, is business, and it's not a phenomenon specific to tech.
I like the idea of an all Microsoft environment because we're working harder and harder to make it easy for our products to integrate at fundamental levels with each other. I think we're creating better situations for our customers than we have in the past.
However, what I want isn't necessarily what the customer wants, and if I forget that at any time, then I'm being a dick.
"They will never accept Linux if it means losing a sale."
As I'm sure you're well aware, there's a lot more to the F/OSS world than just linux.
I've had customers come to me and say, "Hey - I'm running Windows Server 2003, but all our data is stored in a MySQL database - can I connect to it using.NET?"
My answer here is, of course, *yes*. And I tell him how to do it.
The interesting thing about your statement is that it's (emphasis mine) "...*IF* it means losing a sale."
That's a rare situation. It's also where the head-butting, fierce competition of business gets involved. (At this level, we *are* dealing with competition for the attention of customers - no way around it - that's the arena in which Oracle/IBM/Microsoft have been playing, and in which Linux has been making a home.)
But, to continue...
Just because F/OSS is involved doesn't mean we're losing sales. We might sell a server platform, but lose on the DB, as in the case above. ASP.NET and MySQL working together. Quite possible.
A company might standardize on Office for their docs/slides/etc., but then they might choose to use a Java application server for their web site. We've still made a sale.
It's not an either/or proposition. There is a *huge* gray area where Microsoft products can quite happily co-exist with non Microsoft products.
As someone who used to do work writing ASP apps on linux (using Chili!Soft ASP), Java for the middle tier components, and SQL Server for the data store, I can tell you without a doubt that this stuff can work together. Sure, these sites were running on Cobalt servers using a non-MS ASP implementation, and, yeah, I was hitting Sun's stuff for my business layers, but the data was all being kept on other servers running Microsoft gear.
And, when you say, "They," keep in mind that this includes *me*, and I'm always happy to work with customers to find the right solution to their problems. If they've standardized internally on PostgreSQL but are flexible on their application platform, then, hey - no problem.
The real world isn't some homogenous 100% F/OSS or proprietary thing. Any of us who have spent any time in the field know the realities and challenges, and they often include the integration of *many* components from *many* vendors.
And many of us know that at Microsoft. (That is, "They" do.)
"Hilf's answers sound quite reasonable, something that most of us don't associate with Microsoft."
I don't mean to sound frustrated, but one reason most of You (the slashdot crowd, for example, not you in particular) don't associate "reasonable" answers with MS employees is that you often *disregard* our reasonable answers, or write them off, and just remember the times we say boneheaded things (keeping in mind that *all* people at *some* time will say something boneheaded).
I've been working as one of these MS "evangelist" people for over a year now, and I regularly discuss F/OSS issues with customers.
I know many people internally who work with F/OSS stuff in their spare time.
It's much less unusual than you might think to meet a softie who has a decent knowledge of F/OSS. Before going to work for MS, for example, I wrote a BASH textbook for a local vocational school to be used with government employees (the deal fell through, but I still did the book).
What Hilf said about Microsoft being populated largely with technologists is absolutely true.
It's also true, though, that many of us came to Microsoft because we actually [gasp] *prefer* a lot of Microsoft products to the competition. The result? We're biased. But it's an honest bias - one resulting from a technical rather than religious or philosophical point of view.
I came to MS because.NET blew me away. I was doing VB6 (which I didn't particularly enjoy) and Java, but messing with C#, I found a new love. And, like many others, I took a pay cut to come to MS. My very comfortable six-figure consultant's income has been reduced to... well, something less, shall we say, but I'm happier than ever because the work kicks ass, and I'm closer to the source than ever.
But, in my spare time, I still play with everything.
For example, this comment was brought to you by OS X (went out yesterday and bought my fourth OS X machine). Like many geeks, life for me just doesn't feel balanced without a little bit of *nix in the mix somewhere...
So, give us a chance, yo. *Most* of us don't think F/OSS is "evil." We just like our stuff better than the other stuff. Nothing wrong with that - I'm sure many of you feel the same way about F/OSS vs. Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, next time, don't expect someone who's responding to you to go back and perform a check on every single other comment you've ever left in order to ensure that you're being sarcastic.
/. for me to remember who's who (except for people I actually know, and they consitute a very small portion of the readership).
/. member before responding.
The tone was very much in line with many other comments - nothing to set it apart.
Other than your history, of which I know nothing, as there are far too many people registered on
If "way too many Slashdotters take [you] too seriously," then consider that the problem isn't in their lack of DD - it's your presumption that we've all either read your earlier works, or research every
If there were only a few dozen people here, that'd make a little sense.
With how many people there are, though, it's ridiculous to assume that we all know who you are.
"Google should just announce that it has fully joined the ranks of Corporate America and disavows its founding principles."
I hate to sound like Mr. Rudepants, but how could anyone be so naive?
I know I could be nicer, but it's amazing to me, after all these years, that anybody could still be thinking as this person does.
Do all of you *really* think Google is in this for the benefit of the world? That they're a bunch of philanthropists, going around and doing good for everybody?
In my time at Microsoft, I've observed many instances of insular thought - to the point that it's flat out bad for the company.
But, the blinders you have on are, somehow, even worse.
It's a fantasy to think that Google is, or ever has been, anything other than another powerful player in software (well, advertising, really, but they sell their advertising through software).
It's a company! It exists to make money! They'll do whatever they can get away with to meet that goal!
I try not to comment... I try to remain politic...
But, comments like the one to which I'm responding, as well as many others I read here today, are indicative of an *astounding* detachment from reality.
You're all being played by Google. As long as you believe, or try to believe, that Google is somehow different from the rest of the major players, you're just allowing yourselves to be taken advantage of, and I'm adding a clause so that I don't have to end my sentence with a preposition.
That's all I have to say for now.
"Those people won't live long enough to breed. (Or at least I hope)."
:)
While pulmonary embolism *is* a risk that people who sit for long periods must face, I'm quite certain that most gamers are being smart and taking yoga breaks every forty-five minutes.
Also, as long as you aren't playing forty-hour long sessions in dark, cramped, smoky Korean cyber cafes, then you're probably all right
I'm going to reply even though your comment has been marked as "Flamebait." While that ranking might apply to the tone, something tells me that you're just angry and showing it, rather than looking to have a pointless argument.
.NET to begin with."
:)
;)
So...
"As your greed becomes so obvious, don't be surprised when your victims (or sorry, ex-customers) dump you like old laundry."
I'm not sure where this is coming from. Every company on the planet that has a product to sell has some unhappy customers. This is very normal, and I think most of us inside Microsoft are realistic enough not to expect everyone to be happy with what we offer. Some things just can't be helped.
"Everything about the 'new' live is designed for extra-cost after the initial purchase."
That is just simply incorrect. Users are given (for free) a "Silver" account that gives them access to email, voicemail, chat, and special content. There is also the "Gold" account, which costs right around four dollars a month (if you buy a year at a time), which has more perks, but it's entirely optional.
"Things which should be free cost ridiculous amounts, like the 'Skins'."
We provide the marketplace - other people (companies *and* independents) use it to sell their wares. What they want to charge isn't something we control. If one company wants to charge twenty-five cents (is that a "ridiculous amount" of money?), while another wants to charge fifty, that's their business.
Most of the content on the marketplace is actually *extremely* cheap. The most expensive items right now are the downloadable games, and even they hardly cost anything. I don't know what the exact dollar amount is, but I think you can get a game for less than five bucks (again, is that "ridiculous"?).
"Why is it that you can't remove creditcard information once it is entered?"
I'm not aware of this being a problem. Do you have a link you could provide so that I could read up on it? TIA.
"How long until missing levels from $60 games start showing up as purchasable content?"
I have no idea. I imagine someone would have to start producing and selling incomplete games first, so it might never happen.
"Extra cars or characters for extra-cost purchase to complete otherwise unattainable portions of a game?"
Which games in particular are you talking about? I'm not aware of any games that are out for the console which can't be beaten without "[e]xtra cars or characters." If this really is an issue, then let me know, and I'll let the right people know internally.
"As if you guys at Microsoft could explain
OK - there's been some bad communication on the subject
".NET (aside from a unification API) is a platform to move applications 'online', and guess who wants to be the tollbooth in the middle? Oh yeah, Microsoft! The console Live service is obviously a big market test towards that end."
Interesting.
So, when I was playing LineWars over the modem over ten years ago, was it an attempt on behalf of the developers to "test" the ability to deliver and charge for services?
I think you're making some rather unfounded accusations here.
Xbox Live isn't a "test" for anything. If it is, then it certainly has been going on for a long while - people have been paying for the service since it began.
"The article stated you Microsoft guys want 50% of 360 customers on Live. Yes, I'm afraid it is ridiculous, especially when you are moving to the cell-phone model of charging extra for everything."
Good point. I wish somebody on the team would have considered how few people use cell phones before moving to this model
"I'm hardly slamming the machine itself."
So you like it! Oh, good.
"But the greedy, extra-charge everything on Live"
Again, there is a lot of free content on Live - and free services. You're just flat out wrong here.
"...coupled with your company's insane idea t
Thanks, Swamii :)
What many people seem to be forgetting is that current generations of kids are interacting in a way that's totally different from what many of us experienced growing up.
If you had told me when I was a kid that I should be chatting with friends through VOIP while playing Space Quest, I don't think I would have given you the time of day. In fact, I'd probably try to urinate on you or something. It just wasn't part of my world.
Now, though, kids spent a *lot* of time getting together online - through IM, myspace, games, and other technologies. It's a fact of life for them, and it's only going to grow for the coming generations.
To say that the strategy is "Absolutely flawed" is to look at one segment of the gaming population without considering where *everything* is trending, and that's toward online activity.
I've seen a lot of arguments here of the "Well, I don't like the idea, so it must suck dog balls" variety, but you have to remember that there is a universe outside your own - there are plenty of people who *do* live huge chunks of their social lives through online interactions.
"Briliantly they are testing the idea in their lackluster gaming system before moving it over to their applications."
If you had any idea what you were talking about, you might have a different attitude.
Spend some time on Xbox Live before you slam it. Users have access to a lot of resources for *free* that are pretty nifty. Like being able to download 720p movie trailers, new content for games, game demos, and more.
I *work* for the company, and I was a skeptic before the 360, but the new system made me a convert. I didn't see the value in Xbox Live for the original console, but it's a very different, much more integrated system now, and I don't *have* to pay to take advantage of it.
That said, I did wind up paying so that I could have the privilege of losing online races to children who are ten million times better at gaming than I am, but payment isn't a requirement, and this isn't a "test" for online services. The Xbox team has about as much to do with the Office team as Google does with Yahoo - they aren't sitting around, coordinating their strategies, or their wardrobes, or whatever. Much of the industry is moving toward services in one way or another, and this is the Xbox team's approach.
And there's nothing wrong with it. The Xbox team, through Live, is providing a service that otherwise wouldn't be available (being able to download updates to the Xbox emulator, for example, is something that would be a pain in the ass without Live).
What's great is that people *do* have a choice. You can rail all you want against Microsoft, but remember that it's *customers* who *want* these services who are paying for them - nobody is being forced.
"Taking my online gaming and trying to make it a 'social interaction' *IS* the wrong approach."
That's a pretty heavy statement, and I haven't seen a convincing argument in favor of it (certainly not from the article).
While the social interaction might not appeal to *you*, it clearly appeals to others. I've been spending a couple hours each night on Xbox Live, and I'm amazed at the number of people who just want to start conversations while racing around in PGR3. It's odd, to be sure, when you meet up with someone and try to get to know them over a two or three minute period, but it happens, and people seem to like it.
There are even patterns that emerge - little de-facto social protocols. While in the lobby, waiting for a game, the most common way to start a conversation is for someone to put on his best "tough voice" and say, "Whassssssuuuuup." Then other people start to chime in, the faux toughness is dropped, and a real interaction ensues.
I found it odd at first, but now I think it's pretty cool. I've started to encounter a lot of the same people each night, and it's actually pretty fun getting to know them through these very short interactions. It's almost like speed dating for friends.
The fact is, the kids who grow up with this generation of gaming aren't going to look at it the way previous generations did. Growing up, I was happy to play adventure games by myself in a basement, but kids now want to be connected, and Microsoft is providing the tools with which to do it.
"Blanket generalizations are almost always wrong."
:)
Yours is an exception, I suppose
"Wow, this 'analyst' just shredded his credibility with that whopper."
Agreed. The thing that I don't understand from TFA is just how it is that he's supposed to know anything about what gamers want. In other words, how is he an authority? If there was a bio, I missed it.
I'd also be interested in seeing the data he consulted to arrive at that opinion. It sounds a bit more like armchair psychology to me than an informed, numbers-driven position.
While I sometimes play games to escape, I've also been learning to play for social interaction, so from a personal point of view, I just don't see what he's getting at.
When saying that Microsoft's strategy is "Absolutely flawed," he really ought to have provided further explanation. And, perhaps he did - in a case like this, the journalist might have been going for sensation rather than substance. I'd like to see the quotes that *weren't* inserted in the article.
"If it isn't already obvious, this is Microsoft's attempted way of extracting monthly revenue out of their customers."
.NET."
.NET isn't a web service. If you're going to slam our stuff, you could at least get your story straight.
Oh. dear. I had no idea.
How awful.
I quit... Do you hear me, Gates? I QUIT!!!
Taking money from customers - what will we think of next?
"You can see it in the way they are now re-attempting to push web services like Office Live and
Uh...
"...they are pushing way too hard with this generation of console, especially since they never garnered more than 10% or so of original Xbox players."
First off, that "10% or so of original Xbox players" is impressive. It's easy to say that it was "only" a tenth of the potential, but how many people own original Xbox systems? 10% of *that* number isn't too shabby (you *did* read the article, right?).
Also, the live story with the 360 is totally different. While it builds on the existing system, the overall experience has changed greatly, and hopefully it won't take gamers much effort to realize it.
I work for the company, and I didn't care about Xbox Live for the first console. It didn't have a "feel" that attracted me. After getting my 360, though, that changed, and I've been spending every night getting my ass kicked in PGR3 by ten year olds from Alabama - and I'm quite enjoying it.
Seriously, yo - a lot of good people put a lot of work into the Xbox, the 360, and Xbox Live. There's nothing wrong with slamming a technology, or a company, or whatever, but you could at least do so from an informed point of view.
"Ok, so let me get it straight. Microsoft took a credit card machine, masked it as a game console and shoved it out the door."
Did we read the same article?
I'm just wondering. Xbox Live, while having plenty of for-pay content, also has a lot of free content.
Paying more for services is *optional*.
"I'm sure I will not be picking up a 360 since I really don't like the idea of paying someone everytime I want to change something."
I totally agree about not wanting to "[pay] someone every time I want to change something," which is why I'm perfectly happy with the 360.
I really don't know where you're getting this. Not trying to be a jerk - I just don't.
I don't see what's so "Insightful" about the above post.
Isn't anybody else tired of the endless "Mine is bigger than yours" arguments?
I dig MUDs. And I dig graphics. And I dig controllers. And keyboards. And stuff.
They aren't mutually exclusive.
"On a lighter note, the medics didn't find anything wrong with me, and I've chalked it up to stress / coffee"
/.
Yeah. Sounds like it was just a panic attack.
I work for Microsoft, and I have one every time someone posts an IE vulnerability to
"I will agree that things have changed since 95, 98 and the abomination that was ME, but that doesn't mean all the problems are fixed."
Well, "good" is the best any software will ever get. It will never be perfect. Even Apple, which owns the hardware and software stack (and therefore doesn't have to deal with our situation, which is trying to support every last component on the planet), regularly releases buggy products. I've been purchasing Apples since OS X was released, and I have yet to encounter *one* version of OS X where "all the problems [were] fixed."
It just doesn't happen. Even though the later releases are typically very stable, they're never perfect.
We're no different from our competitors in that respect, presumably because our competitors are human and fallible.
"Things may be different and improved, but that does not necessarily mean they've reached an acceptible level of quality. A car where the wheels fall off "only" once a year for only 5% of users is still pretty crappy in my book."
Are we talking about cars or operating systems? And, while we're at it, why 5%?
It's a very different story. Frankly, if someone could produce a general purpose OS that didn't blue screen (freeze (core dump (just completely fucking crash))) for only 5% of users, and only once a year, it'd be a hell of a good job.
Anyway, since you seem to want to talk about cars, let's accept that a car crashing because its wheels fall off is very different from a computer crashing because of its OS. When cars crash, people get hurt. When computers crash, people reboot. Not even remotely the same.
"It would also help if leadership at Microsoft spent less time trying to figure out how to "bury" competitors and more time producing quality product."
It might surprise you to learn that the people who build the OS aren't the same people who work on business strategy.
When your products power some ungodly huge quantity of the world's computers, you're going to hit problems, plain and simple. And, when something goes wrong, people will make a big deal about it. When my Apple crashes, nobody cares. I used to use Linux on a daily basis, and when X shit itself (which it did often), I restarted it. The only different between an Apple or a Linux box crapping out and a Windows box crapping out is that people, for fashion or whatever other reason I don't understand, get really vocal about it. If you want something to get vocal about, then try spending an afternoon with Apple tech support, listening to them refuse to work with you because you have a computing infrastructure that includes a non-Apple item. Or, try being a "normal" user and having to worry about configuring scan line modes in some weird windowing environment's config file.
There's plenty to get vocal about on all sides. But, Apple has its parishioners, and Linux has its geeks. Parishioners tend to defend their church at all costs, and Linux geeks tend to be technical enough that messing with config files by hand isn't a big deal.
Windows services the Rest of the World, so we get a bigger chunk of the vocally upset.
"BTW, thanks for that nice power cord for my first generation Xbox."
You wanted to talk about cars earlier. Tell you what - go figure out which major auto manufacturers in the past ten years have had recalls, and which ones haven't. I think you'll find that part of reality is that not everything goes according to plan.
"Look... deep down, most engineers want to make good products, but that doesn't matter if management won't let them."
How much do you *know* about management at Microsoft? How much do you *know* about what they're allowing to happen? How much do you *know* about our techs?
I'm serious. I'd love to know what your sources are.
"Even if you have a commitment to quality, the company you work for has demonstrated time and time again that they are only interested in the bare minimum."
I don't even know what you mean by this.
"Rather
"That's a pretty bold claim, with a very tiny amount of anecdotal evidence to back it up."
Internally, we have evidence that isn't all that anecdotal. Believe it or not, MS is aware of this little BSOD issue, and it's a source of concern for obvious reasons.
What have people learned? That the *vast* majority of BSODs are caused by crappy third party video drivers.
The parent of the parent has a good point about crappy hardware. One of the nice things about Windows is that, for years, it has had extremely broad support for hardware. The downside of that is that there is no way to keep tabs on every single board going into every single PC.
Anyway, BSODs actually have decreased over the years. While I realize the evidence is anecdotal, and while I personally don't care for anecdotal evidence, I also haven't had a BSOD in years, and I work for the company - I'm using Windows all day, every day, on many machines (I also run a couple Apples, but that's a different discussion with different problems).
It's really too bad BSODs used to be so ubiquitous. It obviously hurt the company's image, but things have changed. Granted, it might be a few years before that's common knowledge, but it'll happen (or, it preferably *won't* happen - I'd rather see silence due to a total lack of BSODs across the board rather than people suddenly waking up and saying, "Hey! It actually works! Hurrah!").
I can understand why, based on previous experiences, people like yourself still have strong feelings about BSODs, but, again, things are different now.
"Even the the original XBox could be hacked into such a system, suggesting that MS deliberately crippled their new console."
If you want to do something with the 360 for which it wasn't designed, and if that something turns out not to work, then it isn't a matter of the device being "crippled."
You don't say your car is crippled when you drive it into a lake and find that it doesn't float quite as well as you were hoping. You just get out (if you can), walk up to shore, and say, "Hey - guess it's not one of those floaty car things."
"Because face it folks, the CPU cycles available to them just ain't there to fully emulate a P733 in software."
/., we're also pretty damned good at ensuring backward compatability (we kept DOS and 16 bit Windows APIs alive for quite a while, and we're keeping the Win32 bits kicking in Vista).
:)
/. post), it doesn't sound like they're pushing new binaries down to the machines. It's just a 5MB emulator that works for the entire list of games.
They don't actually need to emulate a PIII.
One thing that Microsoft is good at (and I'm biased because I work for 'em) is creating nice dev tools.
APIs like DirectX (us) and OpenGL (the other white meat) were made for this kind of scenario. If you think about it, nearly any PC game would have to be "ported" from system to system because of differing hardware (sound and video cards, etc.). Having these APIs completely changes anything since they sit between the games and the hardware, basically making ATI and NVidia (and all those other companies) cards look the same to the developers.
Because of DirectX, you and I could potentially choose from the same catalog of games for PCs even though we have boxes manufactured with components from many different vendors.
Take this over to the 360 - Like I said, MS is good at dev tools. I might as well add that, whatever the response might typically be on
To get around the problem of trying to emulate an entire CPU, I'm expecting to see a compatability layer that will make the 360 appear in some ways like an Xbox - a sort of DirectX (Xbox) to XNA (360) layer.
If you can just replace calls, then you don't have to try to emulate the hardware (WINE works in a similar way - it's not an attempt to emulate Windows, but actually an attempt to recreate the Windows APIs).
Of course, as you pointed out, we're probably going to see a mix of methods used to create the emulation, but whatever it is, it *is* working
Also, I have no idea what I'm talking about, so ignore me. I'm probably just adding to the noise, but I'm curious about all of this as well...
"Sure they would invest whatever effort were required to get Halo running, even if it were basically recompiling the whole set of binaries, but how much effort will go into obscure games?"
From the article I read (linked to from the
One of the reasons you're not seeing a longer list yet is that the team is verifying each game by hand before it gets added. This could obviously take a while, and we're (hopefully) going to see more games added to the list.
Whatever happens, though, this is a good thing. I didn't expect to see backward compatability since it's definitely *not* typically part of the package with consoles. The PS2 managed, but it was the exception to the rule.
Maybe Sony changed the scene for everybody, though - maybe emulation will be standard on major consoles from here on out.
Which would be cool. I'd like to think the Revolution will still play my GC games...
"Also, how big are the emulators going to be?"
There's only one emulator, and according to the associated article, it's going to be about 5MB, so not a space hog.
"From what i understand with most emulators, it takes roughly 5-10 times the processing power to emulate one piece of hardware on another. but i remember reading years ago that since the xbox was basically a pc, that 1:1 emulation should be possible and not require a 6 ghz pc to run games at full speed."
:)
You have to keep in mind that the Xbox 360 is much closer to being a Mac rather than a PC, so it isn't as simple as it sounds.
However, from what few technical details were given in the associated article, it sounds like the emulation is taking place in part at the API level, which is to say that they're wrapping calls to the 360 to make them look like calls to the original Xbox. This is a total guess, though, since they really didn't give us a lot to go on in the interview.
If that's the case, though, then it's a sort of hybrid emulator - not so much replacing the hardware as much as adding a compatability layer to the software that handles calls from the games to the machine.
Again, though, this is just total shot-in-the-dark guessing.
"i haven't looked for awhile but was curious as to how this statement was flawed."
If we were talking about a game that was being released for the Xbox (original) and the PC, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. I forget what the exact details are, but from what I've read, the Xbox has its own custom version of DirectX, which means that it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to port games that used DirectX on the PC.
I think a lot of the difficulties would be in dealing with the different interfaces (mice/keyboards vs. controllers) and environments (TVs vs. monitors, etc.).
But, and just to make it absolutely clear, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about
"From the looks of it, it may not be true emulation, it might simply be a new binary of the game recompiled for the new system."
It's emulation.
1) If you were you recompile the games, you'd have to release new media - this is supposed to work by sticking your original Xbox CDs in the drive and go
2) It says in the associated article that it's a software emulator
"The claim of taking a huge paycut. Yeah. riiiiight."
It's actually quite common to take a pay cut to come to MS.
I don't think I can legally post figures, but my yearly income shrank by roughly 40%.
That said, I also have a *lot* of benefits. I have real health care, real vacation time, nice company hardware, access to shitloads of software for free, discounts at hotels/restaurants/this/that, etc, and all while I'm being paid to travel around and talk tech with developers.
I also don't have to deal with the IRS on a quarterly basis, and that alone was worth the cost of admission. Doing paperwork for your own stupid corporation is a pain in the ass (unless you're a Vogon and really dig that kind of thing).
I make less, but I'm getting a hell of a lot more out of life now than I was before.
So, yeah. Skepticism understood, but it's the truth.
"Are you doing that right now by reading and posting to /. during business/working hours? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I really want to know. It used to be a conspiracy theory that Microsoft employees would astroturf slashdot in an attempt to skew community discussion to be more favorable towards them, I'm just wondering if there's any kernel of truth to that."
I understand your skepticism.
First off, these aren't my work hours. I'm a "remote" employee, and my hours are, except when I'm with customers, completely flexible. A lot of my work gets done long after the sun has gone down and before it's come back up.
As for astroturfing - I have no doubt that it happens, although I suspect that it's more product teams coming out and trying to counter some of the FUD rather than trying to unfairly sway conversation. But, this is all my opinion.
Not only have I not been asked to do this, I've actually received notes from product leads (and others) saying, "Hey - this is great and all, but you're speaking on behalf of our team, and you aren't even on it. Leave this to us." While I respect that, I have a hard time remaining quiet when nobody else is saying anything.
Talk smack - that's fine - but don't lump *all* of us in to one big package and label it "evil."
Believe me - there's more than enough ammunition on every side of this multifaceted fence (OK - the "both sides of the fence" analogy kind of breaks down when the fence has more than one side, but whatever).
Oracle people could talk about MySQL people could talk about SQL Server people could talk about PostgreSQL people could talk about MySQL people could talk about SQL Server people could talk about Oracle people could talk about...
It's a fifteen headed snake trying to eat its own fifteen tails. Just a big clusterfuck mess of people trying to accuse every organization of being filled with assholes just because, as you might expect from *any* cross section of a general human demographic, *some* of the people are.
Also, I'd just like to point that that, if I *were* officially being asked to do this (astroturfing), then I might also be encouraged to shy away from words like "clusterfuck."
"You've made a sale, but that doesn't mean you haven't lost a sale."
.000003% market share is gained by the browser. It's not that significant, but, shit, if I were them, *I'd* be excited, too. It's much better than gaining no ground at all.
Sure, but given the choice between 50% of something and 0% of that thing, I'll take the 50%.
I might aspire to a greater portion, but a partial win is significantly better than a total loss. Look at the excitement in the FireFox community every time
Anyway, the customer is the priority. If I'm working with someone who has standardized on MySQL but wants to use ASP.NET to serve web apps, then I'm going to help that person.
Am I going to plug SQL Server along the way? Yeah, sure, just as an OSS consultant would probably push for PHP instead of ASP.NET. That's normal - it's competition. Even if you're like me and have an appreciation for both sides, there's a bias toward one of those sides. My bias is toward MS.
But, I'm not the slightest bit interested in disrupting someone's business so that three more MS SQL Server licenses get sold and replace an established core of MySQL DB servers - they probably already have people who understand MySQL and work well with it. In that case, a switch might create some short term issues for the customer. If MySQL is a problem for them, then that's different, but if it's working out, then...
The idea behind all this tech, whether it's proprietary or F/OSS is to *help people*. That involves a relationship, and relationships, all of them, are built on compromise. If that compromise means that we can get ASP.NET hooked up to their MySQL servers, then that's that. A win for a customer is a win for us.
"I think it's fair to mantain that any situation where any product (FOSS or otherwise) is used where a Microsoft product could have been used is a situation where Microsoft would rather the other product didn't exist."
Would we *prefer* that you exclusively use our products? Of course.
Think about going out to a restaurant while holding a cup of coffee you bought someplace else (I do this often because I like different vendors for different products). You'll get the evil-eye from your server if you try to keep the coffee on the table, in full view of everyone else. That server would much rather make the sale of a drink from *his/her* establishment.
That, too, is business, and it's not a phenomenon specific to tech.
I like the idea of an all Microsoft environment because we're working harder and harder to make it easy for our products to integrate at fundamental levels with each other. I think we're creating better situations for our customers than we have in the past.
However, what I want isn't necessarily what the customer wants, and if I forget that at any time, then I'm being a dick.
"They will never accept Linux if it means losing a sale."
.NET?"
As I'm sure you're well aware, there's a lot more to the F/OSS world than just linux.
I've had customers come to me and say, "Hey - I'm running Windows Server 2003, but all our data is stored in a MySQL database - can I connect to it using
My answer here is, of course, *yes*. And I tell him how to do it.
The interesting thing about your statement is that it's (emphasis mine) "...*IF* it means losing a sale."
That's a rare situation. It's also where the head-butting, fierce competition of business gets involved. (At this level, we *are* dealing with competition for the attention of customers - no way around it - that's the arena in which Oracle/IBM/Microsoft have been playing, and in which Linux has been making a home.)
But, to continue...
Just because F/OSS is involved doesn't mean we're losing sales. We might sell a server platform, but lose on the DB, as in the case above. ASP.NET and MySQL working together. Quite possible.
A company might standardize on Office for their docs/slides/etc., but then they might choose to use a Java application server for their web site. We've still made a sale.
It's not an either/or proposition. There is a *huge* gray area where Microsoft products can quite happily co-exist with non Microsoft products.
As someone who used to do work writing ASP apps on linux (using Chili!Soft ASP), Java for the middle tier components, and SQL Server for the data store, I can tell you without a doubt that this stuff can work together. Sure, these sites were running on Cobalt servers using a non-MS ASP implementation, and, yeah, I was hitting Sun's stuff for my business layers, but the data was all being kept on other servers running Microsoft gear.
And, when you say, "They," keep in mind that this includes *me*, and I'm always happy to work with customers to find the right solution to their problems. If they've standardized internally on PostgreSQL but are flexible on their application platform, then, hey - no problem.
The real world isn't some homogenous 100% F/OSS or proprietary thing. Any of us who have spent any time in the field know the realities and challenges, and they often include the integration of *many* components from *many* vendors.
And many of us know that at Microsoft. (That is, "They" do.)
"Hilf's answers sound quite reasonable, something that most of us don't associate with Microsoft."
.NET blew me away. I was doing VB6 (which I didn't particularly enjoy) and Java, but messing with C#, I found a new love. And, like many others, I took a pay cut to come to MS. My very comfortable six-figure consultant's income has been reduced to... well, something less, shall we say, but I'm happier than ever because the work kicks ass, and I'm closer to the source than ever.
I don't mean to sound frustrated, but one reason most of You (the slashdot crowd, for example, not you in particular) don't associate "reasonable" answers with MS employees is that you often *disregard* our reasonable answers, or write them off, and just remember the times we say boneheaded things (keeping in mind that *all* people at *some* time will say something boneheaded).
I've been working as one of these MS "evangelist" people for over a year now, and I regularly discuss F/OSS issues with customers.
I know many people internally who work with F/OSS stuff in their spare time.
It's much less unusual than you might think to meet a softie who has a decent knowledge of F/OSS. Before going to work for MS, for example, I wrote a BASH textbook for a local vocational school to be used with government employees (the deal fell through, but I still did the book).
What Hilf said about Microsoft being populated largely with technologists is absolutely true.
It's also true, though, that many of us came to Microsoft because we actually [gasp] *prefer* a lot of Microsoft products to the competition. The result? We're biased. But it's an honest bias - one resulting from a technical rather than religious or philosophical point of view.
I came to MS because
But, in my spare time, I still play with everything.
For example, this comment was brought to you by OS X (went out yesterday and bought my fourth OS X machine). Like many geeks, life for me just doesn't feel balanced without a little bit of *nix in the mix somewhere...
So, give us a chance, yo. *Most* of us don't think F/OSS is "evil." We just like our stuff better than the other stuff. Nothing wrong with that - I'm sure many of you feel the same way about F/OSS vs. Microsoft.
C'est la vie et tout ca, etc.