I think that’s a little naive to how these massive dinosaurs operate. Microsoft doesn’t build anything in an afternoon, not even Minesweeper. There are probably multiple careers at least partially dependent on the metrics from this. Everything becomes an ongoing process at MS scale, for better or worse.
Then Microsoft is operating incompetently and it's not my obligation as a player of Minesweeper to endure their shit version of it because their organization is incapable of taking on a simple problem simply.
If you can't as a company belt out a simple game in a short amount of time without roping in 4 project managers a senior project manager 2 senior developers 12 code monkeys and 4 graphic designers and all the overhead to manage them, your company sucks and should be buried.
> Microsoft doesn’t build anything in an afternoon, not even Minesweeper.
Heck, once you factor in alpha, beta, and user testing, I don't think anyone could build a releasable Minesweeper in an afternoon unless it's just a junk implementation.
Surely e.g. the version that was good enough to ship to hundreds of millions in Windows XP is not junk, and it seems like something on that level should be totally doable in an afternoon by someone familiar with GUI application programming? The actual game logic should take like 10 minutes.
Like what would be the scope of an "alpha" that isn't a working game? Opening an empty window? Writing a console version of the logic?
> The actual game logic should take like 10 minutes.
True, but there's a lot more to it than the game logic. Regardless, it's not a complex application by any standard -- but I don't think I know any dev who could implement it well and in its finished form in an afternoon.
> Like what would be the scope of an "alpha" that isn't a working game?
I don't understand this question. Any alpha is a working program. If the devs don't think it's done, then it's not yet an alpha.
As much as I do appreciate Elon's takes on a lot of things and some of his approaches. I don't think he would work out well for a corporation the size of Microsoft.
Microsoft is almost more of a conglomerate than a singular software (and hardware) company. It would take a solid leader who also appoints appropriate corporate heads in each division.
The marching orders for Windows seems to be "monetize home users." They don't "sell" the OS anymore on practical terms for home use... it's more about trying to sell adjacent services, shove Edge with built in consumerware plugins and nickel and diming every possible corner to each out a dollar or two a year per user.
Often times when this stuff comes up I think it’s Microsoft’s organizational structure that’s to blame. Namely that each team operates like their own little company in many ways. So the team and PM for minesweeper forget they’re just a small part of a broader ecosystem.
At some point I hope there's an interesting documentary or memoir on whatever happened to Microsoft's Carbonated Games, because in my mind as an Xbox fan from the early days of the 360 that's maybe where some of the interesting bodies were buried. At the time as an intern in an entirely different division, Carbonated Games seemed like it was built out of PopCap envy. (Today it might be called King envy, with the irony that Microsoft now owns King.) It seems like there was an idea to take casual games seriously, and they had some incredible talent. Hexic was designed by Alexey Pajitnov (of Tetris fame), who had been working for and was seemingly under-utilized by Microsoft for years at that point (other than Hexic his biggest known contribution to a Microsoft product was 1997's [fantastic] Microsoft Puzzle Collection aka Microsoft Entertainment Pack [5]: The Puzzle Collection).
I don't have any clue how or why Carbonated Games blew up (other than jokes about maybe they were a bit over-carbonated), but the only official game they released was Hexic and a few later versions of Hexic.
There was a sense that Carbonated was going to be the first party developer in charge of things like modern Solitaire and Minesweeper. For whatever reason that Carbonated blew up, when it blew up Microsoft let a second-party relationship (Arkadium) sweet talk them into that catbird seat. It's an incredible revenue stream for a privately held company and seems to be an incredibly favorable contract that lets them keep using Microsoft's brand.
Should it ever finally come to light, I imagine that the full story of how Carbonated blew up and Arkadium was waiting in the wings for that seems likely to be some binary of either a completely dull story of bad budgeting and worse contracts or an incredible story of international intrigue, bribes, backstabs, and betrayals. (We already know Alexey Pajitnov is a player early in the story, and his Edgerton-led tale is in recent amusement media, but also more recently Arkadium got into a lot of hot water because the majority of their development staff were in an office in Crimea. There's a lot of interesting questions to be had there.)
Sounds like a fancy handwavey excuse for organizational blindness.
If I showed up for work in a top hat, gold watch and a lovely lavender evening gown under a piss soaked parka while wearing clown shoes, I would be asked politely but firmly to go home and come back in a presentable fashion for my job.
The MANGA companies do the organizational equivalent of this on the daily and rather than excusing them from the gala people line up to dance and hope that some of the leftover urine dribbles on them.
It's pure insanity that we as a society have no uniformly and completely recoiled in horror from them.
For me at least it’s not actually the price of the Uber but that I know what it will be up front. I wasn’t really taking cabs until uber was ubiquitous though so maybe that’s not the same for everyone.
Fortunately for us customers, it seems Uber catalyzed a transition among most other taxi companies as well to improve this. A bunch of local taxi companies here have apps that have the same features as Uber, where you can pay in the app and see where the cab is on its way to you etc. There are "OEM" taxi callcenter cloud services that small taxi companies can rent to get the uber experience for their fleet without any IT knowledge, each car gets an iPad with an ODB connection and you're ready to go.
In Oslo, Norway, one of the major taxi companies has an app called Taxifix. You reserve a maximum price in advance. If it ends up cheaper, you only pay the actual price. If it ends up more expensive, the taxi company covers it. You can also see where your taxi is on a map while you are waiting
I think other companies have similar apps, but I always use this company as they usually have more competent drivers and reasonable prices
Taxis are not great here in Denmark, I don't know why you'd think to state this. They are also not "used all the time", instead used sparingly because of how outrageously expensive they are. Taxis are run by cartels here who have carved up Denmark amongst themselves. Drivers wait in queues, idling, and are paid to idle, sometimes dozens of cabs at a time. As a result, taxis in Denmark are some of the most expensive in the world.
Uber was banned here in Denmark because the taxi companies saw a threat to their easy money. Drivers wanted to drive independently and for a brief period where Uber was allowed to operate, competition flourished and prices came way down.
I'm not saying Uber is a good thing but pretending or even suggesting that the taxi companies are somehow an ethical or good alternative is absurd.
hmm, ok so maybe things changed in the last 15 years as I do not go out on the weekends anymore but basically all I remember was everyone taking cabs everywhere.
My experience from other countries made me feel like hey, these Danes sure do use the cabs quite a bit.
As a general rule I find the cabs in Denmark more reliable and better maintained than UK, Italy, and any region in the U.S I've lived in.
>As a result, taxis in Denmark are some of the most expensive in the world.
Everything in Denmark is some of the most expensive of that thing in the world. Suggesting that taxis are somehow different than all the other expensive stuff in Denmark is absurd.
I guess you and your friends are rich. I can easily go out 3 nights instead of going out 1 night and taking a taxi home in sweden. I can imagine dk is worse :D
Well there are limits. You can’t for example protest in my living room or by breaking into the Capitol building. Trespassing can be a form of protest but it’s still illegal.
If they had broken into the offices after violently clashing with police, or if they were ransacking the place, I would be 100% in favor of arresting them - just like the Jan 6 protesters who attacked the Capitol.
Instead, as far as I've seen even from the Daily Wire, these people just walked into the offices of their company's boss (at worst breaking a lock?) and were sitting there without disturbing his papers or breaking his computers or anything violent.
I think that is the crux of the problem actually. Same with Teams, what the buyer wants is misaligned with what the end user wants unfortunately. Most resources are put towards making it an easier sell rather than towards a product the end user loves.
I think it complicates matters with her being in sales. It’s a much more cutthroat area in companies the size of Cloudflare from what I’ve seen. If you don’t perform you get cut loose really fast. I have a family member in tech sales and it blows my mind how easy it is to get fired.
That’s interesting. I wonder if it has to do with size. I work at a really large company and the commissions are apparently lower but the sales jobs appear more stable. The companies my family member has worked at all fall in the 500-1000 range. Not small but definitely in the sort of high growth phase.
Maybe just lowering the allowed concentration of thc in products. It’s wild how strong some of the weed is now. Splitting a joint now I imagine is quite a bit different than in the 70s.
