Turning on the firewall in XP, modifying the firewall in XP, and turning off the firewall in XP...all things that most users need to do regularly...are lessons in just how poorly designed you can make a system if you really, really try.
Posted on 01/06/2005 4:52:59 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
Despite suffering technical glitches that prompted jokes and guffaws, Bill Gates promised Wednesday that Microsoft Corp. would help millions of consumers stay seamlessly plugged into a world of digital music, movies, video games and television shows.
In his seventh annual keynote speech at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's chairman explained that the proliferation of broadband Internet access and the falling price of data storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format.
"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," Gates told hundreds of technologists who gathered for his kickoff to the world's largest electronics show. "It's going even faster than we expected." But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers - even the world's richest man - are to hardware and software bugs.
During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to Gates' pushing of the remote control.
Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a video game expected to hit retail stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" and warned, "out of system memory."
The errors which came during what's usually an ode to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry and its increasing control of consumer electronics - prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?"
Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like NBC's Late Night set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.
Gates also announced several partnerships with telecommunication companies such as SBC Communications Inc. and television networks.
Microsoft and music network MTV last month inked a deal that will eventually allow people to send cable programs from rock, pop and country music channels and Comedy Central to their laptops, hand-held computers and other devices.
Gates also announced that Korea's LG Electronics SA, the owner of Zenith Electronics, would build a DVD player recorder using Microsoft's digital video recording software. The product, which will be available in the fall, will attach to a television so users can record live shows onto a DVD.
Although he accepted guffaws from audience members in the theater, the technical hiccups didn't prompt Gates to engage in a hard-hitting analysis of computer reliability and security. Power outages, hardware failures and software bugs often inexplicably humble those who strive for a Windows-based digital lifestyle, and world's most popular operating system is also a favorite target of hackers, virus writers, spies and spammers.
"We've had a fair share of success and a fair share of things we've had to do version two and three of," said Gates.
Gates downplaying his company's shortcomings isn't surprising. He founded the company to create software for the budding niche of personal computers in the early '80s.
But now senior executives are eager to get a piece of the $108 billion consumer electronics market in the United States, now dominated by Asian brands such as Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and LG Electronics. It will likely take Microsoft years to understand the consumer electronics market and produce simple, glitch-free products for consumers' living rooms, analysts say.
"Microsoft was founded by programmers and is still run by programmers, and the bias of programmers is that software can do anything," said Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft. "While Microsoft's goal is to turn the PC into a superhub that does everything - plays music, works as a cell phone, stores your photos - they're running up against the fact that most people buy discreet components that do particular things."
© 2005 Associated Press.
But it has some annoying features. Even on multiprocessor systems, you can't just launch a process like printing a large document and continue using the computer for something else. The next version of Windows needs to handle multithreading better.
Are you running XP on 300mhz Celerons?
LOL!!!
Why would anyone want to run a celery processor?
I do, he does, I'm sure he did. The rest of us have it even worse!
Turning on the firewall in XP, modifying the firewall in XP, and turning off the firewall in XP...all things that most users need to do regularly...are lessons in just how poorly designed you can make a system if you really, really try.
I had the video at one time. When I read this today I thought it could have been old news.
It's happened several times. I don't think itwas Bill gates unveling it, but the Xbox crashed when it was unveiled at the E3 Expo several years back.
I am beginning to think that Bill Gates does this to humor the jealous.
This happens every year, at least once.
But then --- considering the amount of time he is on a computer, odds are it will crash about that often - LINUX, Apple core, XENIX, whatever operating system ... there is no one chip set fits all OS's.
Looks like these people need to learn how to do a dry run. Reminds me of one time when I was working for Blackhawk in Milwaukee. Blackhawk made hydraulic jacks, and Sears (Sears!) was our biggest customer. One day my boss had me paint up a jack real nice-looking. It was from our "test" cabinet, so I asked him if it needed to work, in which case I would have to do some additional work on it. "No," he said. So when the jack was shown to the bigshots in Chicago a day or two later, apparently one of the bigshots tried to pump up the jack. And now you know the rest of the story!
The $1000 do everything home system you buy today is obsolete junk according to the industry next year. That may be fine for people making $100K with nice benefits packages but it sucks for the parents struggling on $50K trying to be sure their children have the computer they're told is needed to succeed.
I miss my Amiga, too! (Actually, I still have my first Amiga 500 -Tetris is still challenging)Also have P4 laptop with XP.
Chopped celery is a requirement for good potato salad.
Revenge of the Nerds. That explains it.
The system I'm using right now, I built 5 or 6 years ago and it runs everything I have thrown at it. It started it's life with Win98, moved up toWin2K, then finally XP pro. I have also had several Linux distros installed at various times. The trick is to do your homework and get the best price/performance ratio you can afford.
No, that would be like getting Johnson wax stripper for free.
He, he, he. True. Right now we purchase Microsoft software that includes Outlook and Explorer et al and then get the spam, spyware, and viruses for free.
Hardly. But seeing how the Windows directory on this machine is 2.39 gigabytes, I can see why you need a rocket engine to run Gates' bloatware.
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