November 28, 2006

Old Fogeys in Training

This was a real eye-opener. A geek reviews the Wii, and finds it lacking compared to his beloved 360. His reasons?

1. It was awkward to use

It wasn’t particularly fun for me, however. It was awkward to play videogames, which hasn’t been the case for me since I got used to controllers with more than a handful of buttons.

2. It *gasp* might make game controllers in the future different

I fear, perhaps too much, that future consoles will be more like the Wii than the 360. Even though it’s a fun idea to have people boxing pixels with their real fists and swinging virtual golf clubs and the like, my bread and butter will be shooters, and I do not want to have to use anything like a Wii-mote and a nunchuk to shoot down virtual enemies.

3. He’s lazy and out of shape

I don’t want to break a sweat while playing videogames. …. While some of the cyberathletes were athletic, too, I don’t think being in good athletic shape should be a requirement for gaming.

The review is really funny if you read it with an old man’s voice - like Dana Carvey as the grumpy old man on SNL “We had to walk on jagged stumps and we liked it!”

The Problem With Programming

Why is software so buggy? They ask Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++. His answer (paraphrased)

Because the stupid users value other things more than they value quality

Yes, those stupid users. How dare they have preferences different from Dr. Stroustrup’s. The unmitigated gall!

Update: fixed a missing apostrophe.

Headlines straight from The Onion

I came up with the following headlines this morning, and thought they would be great as Onion articles.  however, it would be more fun if I opened the floor and let everyone take a stab at the article content.

here are the headlines:

New Plan Worries Alarmists

and

Lack of bad news a source of concern, says constant worrier

How to sound like an executive

  • Whenever someone throws out an idea, say “Interesting idea, but is it actionable?”
  • Whenever someone suggests changing a process, say “I like the concept, but how do we measure success?”
  • When your team starts a new project, say “We need to be clear what ‘Done’ means for this project”
    • You can also say “What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for this project?”

update, with some inspiration from PierG

  • On a new project: “What’s the ROI for that?”
  • “What synergies can we leverage?”
  • “this is nice, but where’s the WOW!?”