Xbox Originator: "Stupid, Stupid Xbox!!" 245
Freshly Exhumed writes "You can't begrudge Nat Brown for claiming some pride in the birth of Microsoft's game console: 'I was a founder of the original xBox project at Microsoft and gave it its name. Almost 14 years after the painful, pointless, and idiotic internal cage-match to get it started and funded, the hard selling of a compelling and lucrative living-room product to Bill (and then Steve as he began to take over), a product that consumers would want and love and demand, I am actually still thrilled to see how far it has come...' But in his recent ILIKE.CODE blog post he is driven to lament that '...as usual, Microsoft has jumped its own shark and is out stomping through the weeds planning and talking about far-flung future strategies in interactive television and original programming partnerships with big dying media companies when their core product, their home town is on fire, their soldiers, their developers, are tired and deserting, and their supply-lines are broken.' Nat goes on to detail a list of Microsoft's past and present strategic Xbox blunders, while tossing some barbs towards Nintendo's and Sony's game console strategies."
Primary Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the interface. It sucks. I bought a machine to game on, not one to sell me other crap. Two years ago when they changed to pre metro I boxed up the x-box and games and gave it to my nephews.
X-Box is doomed. Simply because it's not about gaming, but all about sales.
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet you can have it boot directly to whatever game is in the drive. Wouldn't impact your gaming at all.
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It sure is a good thing the 360 only plays disc based games, huh?
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You can access every game on your account from the guide, no need to fully drop to dashboard.
XBox is fine. (Score:4, Funny)
It's the XBox360 that sucks, frankly.
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If trying to find it truly kicks your ass, electronics might not be your thing.
That's okay though, they still make board games.
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Agreed. That is why, even though the Xbox is very popular, there is no "halo effect" for other Microsoft products like Zune or Windows Phone.
People merely put up with the thing because it plays Halo, they have no love for the device itself.
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What console hasn't been about sales? Pretty much all of the best selling ones were sold at either a loss or a very tiny profit margin so that they could make money off of selling the games. Effectively just a computer designed for content consumption.
Now they're simply adding more content to consume. Makes sense for the consumer when you think about it - no need turn it off, turn on another device, and change inputs when you switch from playing a game to watching movies.
The annoying thing about xbox though
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The new generation of consoles may end up being doomed *for gaming*. That isn't for certain, but it's possible. They've found a better market to sell the devices to (less than half of time spent on the 360 is spent playing video games). Gaming consoles used to be marketed toward gamers. Now they'll be catering and marketing to people who just want to watch Hulu and download the latest "music" video from the retarded flavor of the month.
As someone who enjoys gaming, across the board, I'd be disappointed in t
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Ditch your gaming fans and watch them flock to the PC.
The PC doesn't fill the role of "a box with multiple controllers that you can bring out when friends are over" the way a console does.
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It's the interface. It sucks. I bought a machine to game on, not one to sell me other crap. Two years ago when they changed to pre metro I boxed up the x-box and games and gave it to my nephews.
X-Box is doomed. Simply because it's not about gaming, but all about sales.
How much of your XBox time did you spend in the menu, and how much did you spend in the games?
I'm guessing the ratio is heavily, HEAVILY weighted toward the latter. Your argument is absolutely ridiculous.
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:5, Funny)
DUDE.
Dude.
You have to press A to play the game.
Dude.
I hate pressing A, man. It reminds me of those M$ A-HOLES AMIRITE!!!
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the thing I hate, in any modern game on any platform, is 'press start'. Why the fuck do games still have video arcade-style attract screens?
Off the top of my head, Prototype 2 did it right; it loads your most recent save and starts playing it in the background under the menu. When you click 'continue,' the menu simply goes away and there you are.
Continue with which character? (Score:2)
Prototype 2 did it right; it loads your most recent save and starts playing it in the background under the menu. When you click 'continue,' the menu simply goes away and there you are.
Animal Crossing series does almost the same thing: its attract mode shows NPCs walking around in your campaign's town. But because it supports up to four characters in a campaign, it cuts away to the menu to select a character after you press Start.
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Now that's the M$ way to win back customers, call them liars, insult them and blame them for all the problems. M$ did it to xbox red ring of death customers for months on end. Don't like the interface on the device you bought then you are an arse hole, ha, ha, ha. Every time they had real competition and customers complained about something or wanted changes or really hated something, well screw the whiny arse holes, it's like they 'er' paid for it and had some expectations as 'er' customers and treating t
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
And how is "all about sales" any different than Sony or Nintendo's gaming platforms?
It isn't. For that matter, how can gaming platforms like PCs with Steam be wildly popular and expanding into the platform market with the Steambox (while remaining wildly more popular than game platforms in general right now, I might add) exist when they are, essentially, JUST game sales and delivery systems?
Sorry, the Xbox is floundering for the same reason that things like capable entry level Android tablets come to market at $100 and smartphones sell for $500+ and people barely even blink at the price. The truth is that platform gaming is dying, even with the novelty of things like Kinect. People don't really want to game on their TVs anymore, they want something personal. The TV has become peripheral to home/personal entertainment, not central, and when people can get 90% of the same thing with any given game console, or 70% of what those consoles offer and a little bit more with a modern set-top box, it makes very little financial sense to continue with the "sell the console at a loss" model that Microsoft popularized, never mind anything between that and the Nintendo approach. (Look at sales models - hardly any console did well this past Christmas.)
The entire commercial idea of console gaming needs to be rethought and revitalized or it's simply not going to make a hill of beans how innovative they are.
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People don't really want to game on their TVs anymore, they want something personal.
Then what should people game on when they have friends visiting? Or would you recommend that they switch to non-electronic tabletop gaming? Or would you recommend that they should bring their own phone or tablet, and if they don't own one, it's too old, it's the wrong platform, or they don't own their own copy of a given game, tough dung?
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I hope I'm proven wrong, but I suspect that this entire coming generation of consoles is going to be about catering to soccer-moms and your elderly dad rather than improving your gaming experience and providing more power. Based on hinting over the last three years, I'm concerned that the view from the console manufacturers is that these are now home media and social devices that just happen to play games.
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Have you seen the proposed specs on the PS4 and next Xbox? They seem pretty powerful to just be targeting "soccer moms".
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Yes, I have. Both systems are built using mid range off-the-shelf PC components. The systems are not targeting hardcore gamers, but rather casuals and soccer moms.
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Have you seen the proposed specs on the PS4 and next Xbox? They seem pretty powerful to just be targeting "soccer moms".
Have you seen a soccer mom?..
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While I like the Kinect, those games should offer the ability to move through menus with the controller as well as with hand gestures. What takes me 20 or 30 seconds to do with hand gestures could be done in 5 seconds with a controller. This isn't rocket science - I'm not sure why nobody's made that happen or tha
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The XBox 360 interface isn't any worse than PS3 or Wii, but yes it does need work. Certainly, I'd expect more from a company whose core business is user interfaces. The UI is also too sluggish.
Where did you get this idea? MS rose on the ability to sell to OEMs OS and Office Productivity software. I don't know if you've been paying attention but UI design from MS has generally been very lacking. Take the ribbon which many users loathe. Metro is another example. Many people agree it's fine for touch interfaces but horrible for desktop.
While I like the Kinect, those games should offer the ability to move through menus with the controller as well as with hand gestures. What takes me 20 or 30 seconds to do with hand gestures could be done in 5 seconds with a controller. This isn't rocket science - I'm not sure why nobody's made that happen or that it's not part of the XBox UI guidelines.
Again UI isn't exactly their strong point. For example in WindowsMobile one guideline was that no clickable element should be smaller than 4mm square. That is
As a PS3 owner... (Score:2)
Down to the bizarre warning that every game provides a custom icon for that means "saving, don't turn off". To add insult to injury, on the PS3 you have to click through a warning about the saving icon before starting every game, every single time.
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bull-hockey. If that was the case, then nobody ever play games on mobile devices, which are arguably the most popular 'platforms' at the moment.
Are you claiming that a majority of your cellphone screen is advertising space like with the XBOX? If so, you may have malware. What's more, I seem able to run games etc on my tablet without a monthly subscription to "Android Gold".
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Most mobile gaming is the same shitty game created 500 times with different titles, filled with stupid time-gates to encourage you to spend money on the bullshit "coin duplicators" and other crap that they are constantly peddling to you. Mobile games are, for the most part, of the same quality and mindset as Facebook games. Nothing more.
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I seem able to run games etc on my tablet without a monthly subscription to "Android Gold".
Same applies to XBox - Live Gold is only required for certain apps (mainly Netflix et al) and online gaming.
Re:Primary Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Live Gold is required for doing almost ANYTHING on the xbox. It's the number one reason I don't buy xbox games anymore.
Right now, everything is so tightly coupled with Live Gold that not using gold results in a very aggravating experience. Your statement 'mainly Netflix et al' vastly understates that almost any feature that is not a single player game or dvd requires a Live Gold account. Youtube, HBOgo, Netflix, Pandora...
The way you learn about gold is annoying as well. I'll be looking around the marketplace, find a service that I ALREADY PAY FOR, install it, and then later be told that 'Oh, this feature won't work without gold'
That doesn't even get into the fact that there are many games where you basically gut the game if you remove multiplayer. As a result the entire experience is one of disappointment as I'm continually faced with 'Oh, I guess that would be nice, or gee I wish I could play this with my friend'.
I'm not going to reward a company for rent-seeking to provide me services that 1. I already pay for, 2. I'm paying for the internet to transport the data.
The Live Gold 'feature' is the number one reason I regret purchasing an Xbox and only use it to play single player games I pickup at the flea market.
Same-screen multiplayer (Score:3)
gee I wish I could play this with my friend
That's why the Xbox 360 console has multiple USB ports for connecting wired controllers and a built-in receiver for pairing multiple wireless controllers. PCs can technically do that too, but it's not traditionally done [slashdot.org]. The selection of games that support multiplayer on one machine is consoles' big advantage over PCs.
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Right... and online multiplayer, you know, the feature blocked when you don't subscribe to Live Gold? You are going to need one hell of a long cord and a decent telescope.
(I really think you are stretching by suggesting that what I meant by multiplayer was split screen play. When the discussion is about Live, it is obvious that the point is about discussing online multiplayer and not split-screen play.)
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At that point, for people who pirate their media at least (and there are a lot of them admittedly!), what's the point of buying a console that's sold as a "media hub" when it won't actually play anything they have?
Guess they'll have to start paying for things like normal human beings.
What professionally-made E or E10+ Linux games? (Score:2)
maybe your linux box will have some awesome graphics to play games on
Yeah, like, Team Fortress 2, Counter strike Source, and MORE SHIT IS COMING.
Anything that isn't violent like the popular first-person shooters?
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Not a lot, but I'm betting that's because the most profitable target market for big-screen games is young people who are physically impaired by sloth and overconsumption. Healthy young people will play football, rugby, soccer, or go chase the opposite sex in order to satisfy their glandular systems
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Or it could just be that first person shooters with no depth are easy to churn out. Look at them closely, and there is barely any deviation from the Doom archetype really. You will probably find it very hard to get money for something that is not easy to churn out, so you have to blame the simpletons in charge of the money for underestimating the intelligence and tastes of the 'proles'.
By the way, well done for sounding like a snob on at least 15 different levels :) . Video games don't force people onto the
If he has any influence at all... (Score:3)
Bill needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't think i would ever say this...but have to admit Bill gates leaving MS was NOT the best thing to happen to MS. Srsly though ballmer is just pushing the MS car down the cliff.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bill needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bill needed (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it was when Bill left. A quick look at the history of Balmer shows that he is very big on slaying dragons but not very big on plundering their hoards. Even worse, he prefers to attack without a technological advantage, instead preferring to rely on the massive cash of MS. He took on Google with Bing, the Playstation with XBox, the iPod with Zune, the iPhone and Android with Windows Phone, the iPad with Surface RT, Java with .NET, and Flash with Silverlight. How many of these were big successes?
Compare this to Jobs, who took failed and under-realized ideas (portable music player, tablets, digital music, etc.) and made them work well. Even their PCs and laptops are based on the system model that MS largely destroyed decades earlier in the home market, relegating it to scientific, business, and other specialized applications.
The contrast is like night and day: one struck while the competitors were weak and executed well to carry the day; the other struck while the competitors were strong and executed mediocrily, at best, using massive cash to carry the day.
Re:Bill needed (Score:5, Interesting)
it gets worse...
With ballmer under control they took winning ideas and killed them. For example, .NET and C# did become very successful. What did they do? They killed it in the "new" paradigm called Windows 8.
they had one of the most successful third party dev program and they killed it. Compare the price of MSDN universal when Gates was under control, and when Ballmer was under control. It is not funny! I did a price comparison of Linux, OSX, and Windows as a development environment for a small business or consultant. In this price comparison I included the price of hardware since you do need computers to run things.
Guess which was the cheapest... Drum roll Linux. Guess which was the most expensive? Drum roll Windows, and by quite a bit! OSX was only a bit more expensive than Linux. Windows was just downright expensive when you add things like Office, Windows Server, MSDN development (not talking the universal package, just the 1200 USD package).
What shocked me is that OSX is not that much more expensive than Linux. For hardware does cost quite a bit if you do an apples to apples comparison (excuse the pun). Granted that Apple is still more expensive for the same hardware, but it is not as much as I thought it was.
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When they launch a new model of iMac or MacBook, it is usually competitive and just a bit more expensive than a Dell.
That's a really good point, they just don't refresh as often.
I don't know what happened with the MacPro languishing, but at least they are on the cusp of a new model there from recent reports. But for development it has not mattered as much since any of the other updated macs are powerful enough to do good development on (even the Mac mini).
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Did MS flatline because Bill left, or was it always going to flatline around then because it MS had reached that point where it couldn't go after new markets without canniblising it's core income streams and competitors were lined up to take advantage of that.
Wait... BINGO! I've got BINGO!
Re:Bill needed (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone else long ago noticed how MS flatlined when Bill left, besides the fact that he was obviously a visionary and genius (and not half bad at business either). You may disagree with a ton of things he did, and rightly so on many of them, but you can't look at Microsoft's massive rise and Bill's obvious driving of said rise and go "Yeah, Bill leaving MS was the best thing that happened to them". It's patently ridiculous.
Son, all I remember about your visionary genius is when I saw his book - which was published in 1995 - in Barnes and Noble with a big red sticker on the front which read: Now Revised To Include The Internet.
So much for the vision thing.
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They need a new chair man.
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They need a new chair man.
Nah, they just need to stop Ballmer throwing it.
Re:Bill needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer is doing a bull run full ahead and don't care a bit about what the customers think. Not only the Xbox live account requirement is evidence of that but also the fact that the Windows 8 UI is something that's best useful for three year old kids and not useful for the advanced users.
I suspect that Microsoft has had it's peak and now they are into the process and business model that we saw that many big computer corporations were following during the 70's and 80's where you locked the systems through obscurity. Next step would be a CPU class based licensing of Windows.
The reason why M$ did grow big was that there was not much heavy copy-protection and license key mess in the beginning. People copied the OS from work to run at home as well and so on. It may have been a lost sale, but not many home users would have purchased the full license anyway.
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Next step would be a CPU class based licensing of Windows.
Not to the degree that the old-school enterprise players (IBM and Oracle, say) do it; but Windows licensing has already been spec based for quite some time now. As far back as NT 4.0, there was 'server' and 'enterprise server'(if you wanted 3GB of RAM per-process and an 8 CPU SMP license).
2000 brought 'server', 'advanced server', and 'datacenter server' (4CPU), (8CPU, 8GB RAM w/PAE), and (32CPU, 32GB RAM w/PAE) respectively.
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Windows did do that actually.
If you installed Windwos XP Home, it will run on a dual core, but NOT dual socket machine. Dual socket means you need XP pro.
And for a time, NT was sold as a 1-2 CPU pack and 3+ CPU pack. And to keep it up, the old DOS line Windows only supported 1 CPU - you were encouraged to move to NT if you had a dual proc machine.
Another one? Sheesh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh look, it's another retired general bitching about how much better things were when he led the army. File this one under W for 'Wozniak'.
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Oh look, it's another retired general bitching about how much better things were when he led the army. File this one under W for 'Wozniak'.
The Woz probably isn't the best comparison: In this rant, the guy who kicked off MS' Xbox strategy is complaining about how MS is fucking up Xbox strategy. In the case of Wozniak, Apple's original hardware-hacker-geek occasionally laments the fact that a company that bears almost no resemblance to the "Apple" of his era except the name now produces products that don't even pretend to be interested in the likes of him.
Re:Another one? Sheesh. (Score:5, Informative)
Advertisements even after paying yearly! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Advertisements even after paying yearly! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing stupider than thanking big companies for showing you advertising. "Please sir, can I have a larger, louder, more in-my-face advert? Please?"
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Wow, bet you haven't ever paid for a magazine then, or a newspaper, or how about cable television? The ads are allowing big companies to subsidize your gold subscription. You're welcome.
Cable TV used to be ad-free, that's what the original idea was. Plenty of newspapers are free, and those with a cost are dirt cheap.
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I have asked myself that same question, many times. it is totally crazy, yet i continue to renew my sub.
What's totally crazy is that you haven't blocked those ads at your router, which doesn't prevent you from using Live.
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Yeah; that's so crazy. Especially since every router comes with a configuration option that a user who doesn't care to tinker can just check and apply to take away the advertisements.
That would be a valid complaint if this were live.com, but this is slashdot.org and the reader is assumed to know how to use google and possibly even how to log into their router.
Well that was a stupid argument (Score:2)
That would be a valid complaint if this were live.com, but this is slashdot.org and the reader is assumed to know how to use google and possibly even how to log into their router.
Come on, that wasn't even really true a decade ago - and modern Slashdot it's asinine to assume that even 50% of the readers here configure routers at all.
Stop calling it "X-Box", FFS. (Score:2, Informative)
Few things make you seem as ignorant as when you insist on typing "X-Box" instead of "Xbox". I'm the biggest fucking grammar Nazi on the planet, but "Xbox" is a fixed string as it's a trademark. It doesn't matter if it "should" be "X-Box" or "X-box" or whatever -- it's *a fact* that it's "Xbox".
Evolution (Score:2)
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I think the future, the human race will be divided into 4 groups of evolved species with differing hand configurations - the consolers, the keyboarders, the swipers and the rest of the world.
Except evolution requires reproduction, which is a rare event amongst the first three groups.
TLDR Version (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, these are the ACTUAL complaints in the article:
1) Microsoft has purposefully locked out small developers from contributing to XBox.
2) Cluttered interface that bombards the user with unnecessary and confusing pop-ups.
3) Apple may be able to get control of the console business if they open up their Apple Store ecosystem to Apple TV
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#1 is bullshit. With XNA, it's WAY easier for indies to develop for xbox than any other console.
Death of XNA (Score:2)
Apple has even better media services (Score:2)
MS has a pretty good range of media services available, in fact I'd be hard pressed to find anywhere as good
No, you wouldn't actually. AppleTV has all those features (including things like Netflix, Hulu, HBO) with no monthly fee paid to Apple to make use of those features.
That and the AppleTV also supports airplay for small device mirroring.
And it plays media directly from an iTunes account which many, many people have now...
Name format (Score:2)
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I think what he's saying (Score:2)
If he wanted to get another point across he shouldn't have wrote the article like an angry ex.
Meh. Its a tax incentive. (Score:2)
His main gripe seems to be around the 10,000$ fee to be able to develop xbox content.
While I get his point that they might be excluding many young innovative Indy game developers, they are also protecting themselves from the 99% that are not but would try to develop some crap anyway. This way you only get those people that are really serious about making a game. I mean for a start up business, 10,000$ for access to sell your product to HOW many users, is not a big deal. It is to make sure that only quality
Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest (Score:5, Informative)
The ones about UEFI annoy me the most. Too many people, even on slashdot of all places, think UEFI is just a graphical addon to BIOS that also adds DRM. It's nothing of the sort, most existing UEFI systems on OEM computers have a text based configuration tool and don't even secure boot. (Windows 8 mandates the change of the later of course.) Further, BIOS also had DRM capability.
UEFI is a complete replacement of BIOS. BIOS had a ton of restrictions related to all sorts of things, e.g. partition count and size on the bootable hard disk, BIOS requires POST (which in modern systems needlessly adds to the boot time) as well as a ton of reserved and now useless for decades interrupts. These new things that you find with UEFI (e.g. graphical configuration tool) are simply new features that UEFI allows for, but aren't required.
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yeah, the more they overdo the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..
seriously, the bootloader on modern hardware doesn't need all that bullshit.. it just needs to load a binary image and execute it. If a more advanced bootloader is needed, just use the bios loader to chainload in place of the OS kernel. The rest of UEFI is fluff. Your other complaints about outdated POST are easily remedied without making the whole stack suck.
Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest (Score:4, Insightful)
"seriously, the bootloader on modern hardware doesn't need all that bullshit..."
Just what is "all that bullshit"? People that make these comments have no idea.
"The rest of UEFI is fluff. "
Point out some of this "fluff" specifically.
Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it does need "all that bullshit." Booting from anything except an on-board hard disk controller on a PC BIOS is a hackjob. It's just an absolutely horrible clusterfuck. The fact that it ever works at all is a testament to the hard work put in over the past 20+ years by all the bootable expansion card makers.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but your comment really makes me think that you've never used anything except a desktop PC. In the server world, you always boot from an expansion card -- note that onboard NICs count as expansion cards in this context, because the BIOS can't boot from them directly; it has to pass control to the NIC's BIOS, which handles PXE -- at least once in the server's life to kickstart it. And there are a good number of situations where you never boot from a local hard disk. That's not just PXE. It also includes iSCSI and FC HBAs, ROMs or flash devices, RAID controllers, and probably a raft of things that I've simply never encountered.
I think that OpenBoot would've been a better choice than UEFI, personally. But I don't think any knowledgeable person can dispute the need for something better than the 1980s-era PC BIOS.
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UEFI is a complete replacement of BIOS
Open Firmware replaces BIOS and avoids legacy cruft, and doesn't seek to prevent people doing what they want with their computer. Ironically, it's been used extensively by Apple.
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"Open Firmware replaces BIOS and avoids legacy cruft, and doesn't seek to prevent people doing what they want with their computer."
Neither does UEFI.
If you want people to take you seriously, stop suggesting ignorant things.
UEFI lockdown is used in Windows RT devices (Score:2)
Open Firmware replaces BIOS and avoids legacy cruft, and doesn't seek to prevent people doing what they want with their computer.
Neither does UEFI.
UEFI is used in Windows RT devices with no ability to disable Secure Boot and no ability to enable custom mode.
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most existing UEFI systems on OEM computers have a text based configuration tool and don't even secure boot. (Windows 8 mandates the change of the later of course.)
I'll have to check, but I'm fairly sure my home PC doesn't have secure boot, yet it does have Win8 on it.
Secure Boot required for new PCs and new MBs (Score:2)
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It's probably legacy booting WIndows 8.
And truth be told, any modern PC capable of running Windows 8 has probably already shipped with UEFI in it. Yes, UEFI. Intel has not provided an old style BIOS with any chips since at least he Core 2 Duo
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Specifics please? Graphical UIs in setup have nothing to do with UEFI. What are these "mind-boggling" UEFI implementations?
You tribalists are pathetic.
Re:appstore model will not work (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I think most of their arcade games are "shitty" as it is. Plus why should I pay $15 for a title on my xbox when I can get the same game cheaper on four other platforms for less? PLUS, it doesn't cost me $5 a month to take full advantage of my iPad.
A more open and competitively priced market is exactly the thing that would bring me back, but Windows 8 had proven that they have other plans.
Which "four other platforms"? (Score:2)
Plus why should I pay $15 for a title on my xbox when I can get the same game cheaper on four other platforms for less?
Are these smartphone or tablet platforms? If so, then you probably didn't get a gamepad unless the platform was Android and the device was Xperia Play. Or are these console platforms? If so, then they lack anything like the $1, $3, and $5 games in the Indie Games section.
Re:Classic Geek Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is a more obvious piece of astroturf anywhere I'd love to see it. But the bit about loving what you can do with the Xbox you don't actually own is almost as classic as mentioning Smart Glass and capitalizing it.
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Normally I think calls of posts being astroturf are way over-done on the internet, everyone uses that phrase anyone anyone simply says they like anything.
But I have to admit that post was waving more red flags than a Chinese military review...
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No. I run the Plex media server on my Mac and it streams videos to my Xbox and my Roku just fine. And, I run Microsoft Smartglass on my iPhone to control my Xbox.
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I think the classic geek mistake is being made here... that just because it isn't right for them, it's not right for anyone.
That's not a geek mistake; it's a selfish turd mistake.
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From a media perspective, it's a pretty simple extender - in the same vein that DLNA is supposed to do most of this too. My issues:
1. I need to have a Windows machine on at all times I want to use the extender piece on the xbox because Windows Media Center has to be running to give the files to the machine.
2. Windows Media Center doesn't appear to convert a lot of things in my library to a format readable by the xbox; hence I never use the xbox as an extender.
I have had similar experiences on #2 for DLNA
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I'd be thrilled, except that I still have at least $200 invested in PS3 Rock Band DLC alone.
Re:HALO 1/2 and KOTOR (Score:4, Informative)
Because of DirectX, duh.
Bullshit. (Score:3)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the pinnacle of console gaming, on any platform - and it was particularly good on the Xbox.
X Square Circle (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know why he named it XBOX?
Because when you put your thumbs on a PlayStation controller, the right thumb covers buttons marked with an X and a square (that is, a box). Even 360 refers to a circle, which is also a PlayStation button [uncyclopedia.co].
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that, while Hypertransport vs. FSB was a hilariously lopsided contest(and one of the reasons that even the most Intel-friendly OEMs were forced to start shipping Opteron servers in the multi-socket segement), all remotely recent Intel silicon(except Atom, which is off marching very slowly in its own direction) use QPI and integrated memory controllers? It took them long enough; but recent AMD and recent Intel CPUs again have substantially the same layout in terms of interface bandwidth and pl
Re: (Score:3)
Are you that pompous ass at every party who feels the need to brag to everyone "I don't even OWN a TV"?