Xbox done

Here's the Xbox One...

There is no backward compatibility: you can't play anything from your already-existing library of Xbox 360 games on it.  You can't play your original Xbox games on it either.  Ditto for any games from Xbox Live Arcade.  It has no power button (it stays on all the time) and it needs an Internet connection to really function optimally.  It has a hard drive, but it's non-removable.  To play your games you must install from the disc.  If there is no more room on the hard drive you'll have to wipe some games off (then re-install if you want to play them again later on).  It won't work at all without the Kinect sensor (something which unless you have ample enough space, could be a problem).  Once you play a new game it's tied into that Xbox One unit and you can't easily take it anywhere else or let a friend borrow it or be allowed to sell it... okay well you can but the next player using it will have to pay a fee to Microsoft.

But at least it will tie all your incoming cable TV, satellite TV, Internet, Blu-ray and whatever else into it so that you only need one remote control.  I guess that's something worth five hundred bucks, huh?

The big "reveal" yesterday spent way more time raving about the Xbox One's television and home entertainment capabilities than it did about actual video gaming.  Seems to kinda defeat the point of pouring the entire budget of a typical developing country into the design of something for... you know... playing video games.

The lack of backward compatibility alone turns me off completely from wanting an Xbox One.  But then Microsoft had to add insult to injury more ways than I care to count...

I'm gonna be way, way content with my Xbox 360 for a long time to come.  Based on commentary I've seen since yesterday's reveal, I won't be the only one apparently.  Heck, lots of people and private businesses are still using Windows XP nearly twelve years after it was released.  I'm expecting the Xbox 360 to enjoy similar longevity.  Along with anticipating Microsoft's entry into the next-gen console wars to slip to a hard second after the PlayStation 4, and perhaps even lagging significantly behind the Wii U.

And one last thing about the Xbox One: it's ugly too.  It's like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey as envisioned by George Orwell: a big black solid slab of freedom is slavery.

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DONKEY.BAS: Bill Gates tries to create Xbox twenty years too early...

Good friend and fellow blogger Scott Bradford pointed out that today is the 30th anniversary of Microsoft giving MS-DOS its name. That was the main operating system for the vast majority of personal computers for many years, until it came to be supplanted in the mid-Nineties by Microsoft's own DOS-less Windows software (even though every version of Windows since Win95 has had the original style DOS window available to open, just like the old days).

Well, 1981 was another landmark year for Microsoft, though it's the kind of history that Bill Gates would no doubt just as well wish nobody would remember! It was in 1981 that Gates and fellow programmer Neil Konzen wrote DONKEY.BAS. This was the very first video game that Microsoft would ever produce for commercial retail. It was packed in the early versions of MS-DOS, as a way to sorta "show off" the IBM PC architecture's power along with that of the BASIC programming language. Legend has it that Gates and Konzen were working in a hot, sweaty room one Sunday afternoon at Microsoft HQ when they came up with this thing.

So here is the game they produced: Donkey. It's a rudimentary driving game, so named because the "cow" that the driver had to avoid hitting ended up looking more like a donkey. So it became Donkey...

I've read numerous accounts over the years about how Apple's staff broke out into hysterical laughter when they saw DONKEY.BAS in action. And it's not hard to understand why. But in retrospect, DONKEY.BAS is pretty neat in the sense that twenty years later, Microsoft would be rolling out the Xbox and come to dominate home video gaming (a trend that continues with the Xbox 360).

Aim here to read more about DONKEY.BAS at Wikipedia.

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Upgrading to Windows 7 from Windows 1 (and going through EVERY Windows along the way)

Whilst I await the arrival of my iPad 2 (estimated shipping 4-5 weeks, ahhh the price I paid for trying and failing to score one locally) here is something that will make one appreciate Apple's biggest rival in a brand new light. For all the dissin' that Microsoft gets, I have to respect them anew after watching this clip: Andrew Tait's video "Chain of Fools". In it, Andrew upgrades to Windows 7... but he starts with MS-DOS 5.0 running the original Microsoft Windows, and proceeds to upgrade from there to every subsequent version of Windows until he gets to the latest release!

So how successful was his endeavor? Watch and be amazed!

Anyone else nearly shed a tear when they saw Windows 3.1 again for the first time in years? :-P

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"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."

This is part of the PowerPoint presentation that was shown to General Stanley McChrystal and other United States military officers leading operations in Afghanistan. It's supposed to clearly and concisely diagram why the situation there is so dire.

No wonder...

McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, quipped that "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."

Daily Mail brings us the both tragic and comic story of how PowerPoint has become despised by senior members of the military.

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Steve Ballmer celebrates 10 years as Microsoft CEO

It was ten years ago yesterday that Steve Ballmer succeeded Bill Gates as the CEO of Microsoft.

Mash down here for the story at Slashdot.

In honor of the occasion, software developers around the world will be throwing chairs across the rooms of their workplaces.

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Awright, 'fess up y'all

How many poor saps out there were waiting in line at midnight to buy a copy of the Windows 7 operating system?

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Windows 7 to come in Steve Ballmer signed edition

Can you imagine the "Mac vs. PC" ads that Apple is gonna think up for this one? But it's true: Microsoft is releasing a "Steve Ballmer edition" of the Windows 7 operating system, emblazoned with the signature of Microsoft's CEO. There's a catch though: it's only for those who host Windows 7 house parties (uhhh... a house party for the launch of an OS?). Also inside the Windows 7 party kit are: "balloons... Windows 7 tote bags... Windows 7 branded napkins, a puzzle pack, the pieces come together to form a wallpaper image from Windows 7... a pack of Windows 7 playing cards, a color poster" and of course the black box containing Windows 7 itself.

Okay, sounds nifty. But it would have been even more awesome if Microsoft also sweetened the deal by throwing in a Steve Ballmer-signed office chair.

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Bill Gates pours out plague of mosquitoes on captive audience

This has been one of the most hyperactive days for crazy news. First it was the "Klingon convenience store robberies", then the zombie street signs. Now this...

At some kind of pretentious pow-wow called TED, Bill Gates spoke to the audience about the efforts his foundation is undertaking to wipe out malaria. But being not content to deliver a simple speech, Gates engaged in some rather disturbing performance art... and unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes on the assembly of technocrats. "Not only poor people should experience this!", Gates declared, as he released his airborne vector of blood-sucking insects at the crowd.

Doesn't this come awfully close to being an act of biological terrorism? I mean, it's not too far a stretch from this stupid stunt by Gates, to purposefully introducing mosquitoes laden with weapon-grade pathogens into a major metropolitan area.

And then again, some people will say that Bill Gates has been disseminating bugs all his career, so why should this be any different...

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Ten worst uses for Microsoft Windows

Would you trust Microsoft Windows to run a building's elevator system (via a web browser)? Or to operate an Amtrak train? How about the computers regulating radiation therapy at a major hospital? No, I'm not totally dissing Windows but ya know: stuff like that really should have their own dedicated operating systems. Richard Stiennon at NetworkWorld.com has what he considers to be the top ten very worst uses of Windows. Chilling stuff... in a funny kind of way.

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Microsoft stops selling Windows XP today

Today is the final day of widespread sales of Windows XP. After today, it will no longer be possible to purchase a new computer from any major manufacturer with Windows XP installed on it.

The operating system first went on sale on October 25th, 2001. So it lasted with full support for nearly seven years: not bad for any software product but especially one from Microsoft, a company notorious for pushing updates on customers.

I was working at a Best Buy store when Windows XP was rolled out. Everyone associated with computers or media sales had to come in one Sunday morning prior to Windows XP's release for three hours of what I have since come to call "Microsoft religious indoctrination". We had to learn all about what Windows XP could do, what made it different from Windows Me and Windows 2000 Professional, all that jazz. I remember thinking at the time that this was so much ca-ca. That's not a knock on Best Buy at all: they're one of the best companies on the scene today. I just couldn't help but think that it was a little ridiculous to spend so much time being inculcated with the virtues of a bloody operating system...

(That I had to give up the weekend, which I could have spent driving down to Athens from Asheville to see Lisa, did not make me feel better about it either.)

And then sometime later, a few months before getting married, I wound up with Windows XP on my own system. And I promptly decided that the "indoctrination session" we'd been made to sit through was woefully unfair. That in fact, Windows XP was far better than Microsoft was making it out to be.

Windows XP was the most stable version of Windows that I've worked with since Windows 3.1 many moons ago. Not once did Windows XP crash on me or give me a reason to have to reboot. In fact, the only time that I lost any productivity with Windows XP came in January of 2003, and that was my own fault for failing to take precautions: a story that I was writing for the newspaper I was working at was lost because an ice storm knocked out the power and I hadn't saved it to disk. The next day I bought an un-interruptable power supply, and it hasn't happened again since.

And hey, it was Windows XP that I did my first forays into filmmaking. Now I'm working on Windows Vista and if it weren't for all the useless gimmicks like Aero being turned off, I wouldn't get any work done at all. Windows XP was not only stable, it was lean and mean. It respected its users enough to trust them with knowing whether or not something needed to be hogging precious resources. Let us hope that Microsoft has learned its lesson with Vista... but I cannot help but feel doubtful about that.

Anyway, let us raise a toast to Windows XP: the operating system that, whether it's widely appreciated or not, did most of the driving in this first decade of the new millennium.

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Microsoft and Yahoo: Anyone else thinking this?

That Microsoft withdrawing its bid to acquire Yahoo and the subsequent devaluing of Yahoo's stock was a calculated move by Microsoft (I'm terribly tempted to suspect Steve Ballmer especially) to make Yahoo more vulnerable - and far cheaper - for purchase later on?

This might go down as the most classic maneuver that Microsoft has ever made, if that turns out to be true.

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Software pirate sentenced by government to use Windows

Scott McCausland pled guilty to uploading Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith onto the Internet a day before the movie's release in May of 2005. He received 5 months in jail and then 5 months home confinement. As part of that part of his sentence, McCausland agreed to have some tracking software installed on his computer.

There's just one problem: McCausland is a Linux user, and the government doesn't have any tracking software that runs on Linux.

So now the government is making Scott McCausland use Microsoft Windows, or else don't use a computer at all.

If they make him use Windows Vista, would that violate the Geneva Convention?

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Only Bill Gates could sell a $10,000 coffee table

I will probably be buying one of these... ten years from now, at least! Microsoft's new Surface product does seem like a lot of fun though. Here's a video of Gates demonstrating it:

Maybe as a complement for the Surface unit, Microsoft can create a Windows-based chair for Steve Ballmer to throw...

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