XBox One vs. PS4: How software makes the XBox One games look and play better.

The gaming world is buzzing about the so-called “Resolution Gate”.   An alarming scandal surrounding the next-gen console systems, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.  I’ll admit, I’m a bit turned off by the idea that these new systems both seem to be content with running 720p resolutions on my 1080p televisions… I mean.. I’ve been running 1080p standard on all my PC games for years now.  It seems rather odd that they can’t release a console capable of full 1080p resolution. Continue reading “XBox One vs. PS4: How software makes the XBox One games look and play better.”

The Pros and Cons of Windows vs. Linux vs. OSX

I did a random search today.  I wanted to find out what the community thought about the “Pros and Cons of Linux”, and was appalled at the amount of misinformation I found.  I think the world loves to hate on Microsoft Windows, because… well.. it is made by Microsoft.  I was originally simply thinking to myself that maybe there is something about linux that I can learn to like and maybe my own biases were half-baked, but the intelligence level of the average responder was extremely low and their comparisons were petty.

For whatever reason, society has deemed Apple to be “sexy”, Unix to be “cool”, and Windows is just an ugly, unusable, unstable, virus prone operating system.  I felt like most of the people who hated on Windows probably hadn’t even used it for anything other than playing World of Warcraft.   Continue reading “The Pros and Cons of Windows vs. Linux vs. OSX”

How to NOT be a Terrible Software Executive: An Anecdotal Study.

I began my computer programming career roughly 20 years ago with a trial-by-fire in the smoldering ashes of Control Data.  Control Data was once a giant in the industry as much as Microsoft and Google are today, and Minneapolis was  a nucleus of the tech world.  When Control Data went under, it gave birth to a number of spin-offs, including the company that I worked for, PLATO Learning.   As a young 18-year-old kid, I learned a lot from the former Control Data engineers.  I ate lunch with them every day.  I picked their brains.  I heard their stories about the dawn of computer science, Star Trek, and … cats.

One thing about Control Data programmers was certain… they were not intimidated by real programming tasks.  They were around when computer programs were written on punch cards. Many had been working on the same product lines for 28 or more years.  The PLATO learning system was a platform that pioneered some of the very first multi-player games, and featured the very first plasma display to ever go to market. Continue reading “How to NOT be a Terrible Software Executive: An Anecdotal Study.”