Nothing Is All Or Nothing

(via Stefan Tilkov)

A sorry commentary on the state of the software industry from Steve Jones...

SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft... These are the companies who your CIO goes to visit and sits through dinners and presentations on their product strategy, and what they are pushing is WS-* in all its ugly glory. This means that in 3 years time you 100% will have WS-* in your company, in a company you work with, or in a company you want to work with.

Don't worry about WS-Dominance. It will never arrive. But beware of WS-Stupidity.

Having some large software vendor or partner inject SOAP into your data center is no reason to allow it to infect all of *your* work. Push WS-Complexity out to just those edges whose outside forces require it. Stop the enemy at the gates. Make the rest as simple as possible. Always assert your control over your own architecture or you will be a loser.

That's what we're doing anyway. We have a CIO that believes in smart people, incremental development, and lasting systems.

Yow. More Wii Fun

Maybe you're tired of my just blathering about the Wii. My son's been bogarting that Wii, but I reached another milestone with it last night. We played doubles in Wii sports. That another level of gaming fun that I don't believe can be matched with any other system.

Sorry Microsoft. Sorry Sony. The Nintendo Wii is the best thing in gaming in the last 20 years, and you have a ton of work to do to catch up.

Last night my son and I bowled, played tennis, golfed, etc. And not with some artificial hand held, buttony, doo-dah thing.

We were actually swinging rackets, clubs, putting spin on a bowling ball with our wrists, and playing *together*.

Yow. The experience playing with others is even so remarkably more amazing than playing solo.

Just In Time For Christmas

Everyone needs this combination under the tree... sexbuntu and christianbuntu!

If only Rev. Ted Haggard had known about these.

Design and Execution

I'd like to see Nintendo and Apple compare notes. Two brilliant design and execution companies that would appear to complement each other well.

Meanwhile the XBox 360 is ho-hum, Microsoft blows Vista, blows "Zune" (ugh - even the name), and blows yet again their understanding of open source. Ballmer, with little to do apparently in actually *leading* a company, can only resort to threatening Linux.

My prediction -- Novel is not the next SCO. *Microsoft* is the next SCO. Albeit with billions more in the bank -- they are a company desperate for what they've never been:

-- a design and execution company.

Wii in the House

The Wii is in the house. Game Crazy had a midnight event just for the people who pre-ordered. So we got there way early, played the demo Wii, and hung out with a small number of excited employees and customers.

We got the Wii, an extra wiimote controller, a classic controller, four additional games (plus the sports game that comes with the box), some online points for classic games, etc. for a good $50+ USD under the base price of the PS3.

And on top of that we have an amazing game playing experience. Using the wiimote controller is like no other human-machine interaction I've experienced. Feel the gentle "bump" as you traverse from option to option in a dialog, e.g. while building your online characters in the "Me Channel".

Something I learned now that I've played a good bit more since my first experience a few weeks ago: driving with the controller is something like the steering wheel, but the more I "drive" with it, the more I find myself balancing the controller in my hands and tilting the weight of it one way or another to keep the truck on course. This is not really a steering wheel, but close -- it is more of a natural analog for the truck's movement on the screen. More natural than a joy stick -- there is a "feel" for the movement, gently letting the fairly lightweight controller tilt around.

Easy. Smooth. Awe inspiring... you may be a fan of the multiple processors displaying all the PS3 graphics (although I have yet to hear of a purchaser who did not sell their purchase on ebay), but I have trouble imagining someone not coming away from a session with the Wii not thinking this is a big step toward a new style of machine interaction.

Nintendo knocked this one *way* out of the park. The feel is generations ahead of the 360 and I imagine the PS3. Whatever the Wii lacks in graphics processing will surely catch up over time with hardware and software improvements. At $250 per box, I can easily buy another box next Christmas with more graphics and still be on par with the initial cost of the competitors. Nintendo made the right investments.