Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup" - Kotaku Comments

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

L_K_M — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:40:24 MST

@kingclip: By "best in class" you mean "adequate at version 3, but chaper than the competition, so it ends up owning the market" right? :-)

L_K_M

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

L_K_M — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:39:14 MST

It's all very simply. He was supposed to download "curve" but did not, which broke Live. "Curve" must be some kind of monitoring or antivirus software which would have protected Live from the "hiccup." It's obvious!

L_K_M

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

assembler — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:21:19 MST

That's the reason for Bill to step aside. There isn't a patch that can fix him.

Welcome Bill Gates 2008.

assembler

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:23:58 MST

I feel sorry for ("E") th network guy. Just from personal experience, disaster recovery will age you!
...
This is probably a very valuable experience (as was said on Major Nelson's podcast) and will insure that they don't get caught with their pants down ever again. I'd hate to see what this would have been like with 20 or even 40 million users. Live and learn.

okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

NeoAkira — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:21:21 MST

@dowingba:

To be fair the DIY projects and homebrew applications for it made it innovative. Otherwise it was a system, with controllers and games. Unless Live counts as innovative in which case the XBox still is not but Live is.

NeoAkira

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:08:05 MST

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

天

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

dowingba — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:59:00 MST

To be fair, the original Xbox was pretty innovative.

dowingba

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

I_Hate_This_Place — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:48:02 MST

It's not an outage when I and many others could still play our games online. An annoyance, as it was sometimes slow,but you really over-dramatized it with your "LIVE outage watch day __".

I_Hate_This_Place

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

joncoffee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:35:51 MST

5 solid years of 98% reliability, brought down by 2 weeks of "hiccups". Cannon fodder.

hmm...Brian, try not to let in the trolls from Gizmodo, even if its your sister site. She dates weird guys.

joncoffee

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Deano85 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:11:21 MST

He's doing the chewbacca defense!

Deano85

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

limitt — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:52:54 MST

imagine when xbox live gets a tummy ache =)

limitt

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

ara — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:49:30 MST

He was clearly talking about the Xbox360 RROD problem, just watch the clip from Gizmodo. But he did reveal something interesting there. Bill doesn't see it the way many customers do, Xbox as a machine is not the core product for him, it's Live he is trying to sell and develop, the subscription based service, not the hardware, or even the games. In that regard it would be logical that Live as whole will be available on PC and even other devices in future. As far as I've understood Live for Windows only allows you to play, not buy stuff, that might very well be coming.

ara

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

LittleBigPlaneteer — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:07:26 MST

Helloo, he obviously said "Learning Curve" That's an actual saying isn't it, whiel Download curve isn't. Come on people!

LittleBigPlaneteer

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

DaiMacculate — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:58:00 MST

@TechnoPirate: Hey, don't knock on Ralph, he may be our last, best hope for democracy.

I'm guessing vocal servo failure due to improper regeneration cycle...need to get a tech on that right away Steve Ballmer...or should I say...Gorilla Robot!.

Sorry, but I honestly feel that clip can never be allowed to die, its too damn funny.

DaiMacculate

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Terrorsaur. — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:57:25 MST

If you play this backwards, theres a hidden message.
SWEAR.

Terrorsaur.

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

RetroBob — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:44:20 MST

Wow he was all over the shop. It's certainly not clear if he's referring to the recent issues. If he was though I think it's fair to say it's a hiccup given that it has been pretty much fine for 5 years.

RetroBob

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

TechnoPirate — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:27:09 MST

@Tonx: Yes, yes indeed. Kinda sounds like Ralph. "Me fail english, that's umpossible."

TechnoPirate

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Mongoosekun — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:25:56 MST

Maybe he isn't such a bad man and has a serious memory disorder. I suppose the success part is about gaining marketshare until the other two consoles were released. Wii short term and PS3 long term look to make sure rushing to market was a bad call from where I'm sitting in terms of marketshare. Can't say I agree given the amount of money tossed into MSGS.

Mongoosekun

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

duckmouth — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:20:01 MST

Let's settle this once and for all; it's quite clear that he says "peanut down-learning curve", OK? Makes perfect sense to duckmouth.

duckmouth

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

DrunkRaba — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:16:41 MST

pass that sh!t bill...

DrunkRaba

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Maximus9 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:02:44 MST

Sounds like Gates LIVE was having an intermittent issue with its servers. This just goes to prove that Gates is really a robot from a higher life form alien planet...

Maximus9

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

DarknessMyOldFriend — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:02:21 MST

That really sounds like the game creator from Grandma's Boy. Just imagine him breaking in in the robot voice "ME NOT DOWNLOADING CURVE, PLEASE SIT ON MY FACE".

DarknessMyOldFriend

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elint6 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:01:37 MST

@ killtacular
Makes sense. Anyways, I was about to say that we are reading way too much into this, but he is, after all, Bill Gates. And this is, afterall, Kotaku :)

elint6

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Gagamus — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:58:48 MST

Honestly, I think Bill is wrong when it comes to his answer. Apple has always taken risks and quite frankly, their success ratio, while not perfect, is a lot better than Microsoft's. Microsoft would rather perfect something than create something. Considering they still haven't perfected anything, I think it is not a coincidence that the Apple brand is considered to be stronger in the marketplace.

Gagamus

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

TheIrishNinja — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:45:42 MST

nice, another quote to be run into the ground with poor jokes. no one bothered to ask him which game was free?

TheIrishNinja

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

sadkermit - soon to be banned for standing up to the ummm nazi. — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:43:59 MST

I'd venture to say that, yes, at some point in my life peanuts have given me hiccups also.

sadkermit - soon to be banned for standing up to the ummm nazi.

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

AnotherGamer — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:42:47 MST

I think Xbox Live is directly tied to Robotic Bill's central processor/heart. So when RoboBill malfunctions/gets the "hiccups", Live does as well.

"NOW YOU SHALL ALL RECEIVE FREE GAME FOR SCREWY INTERVIEW"

AnotherGamer

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

baked ham — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:35:59 MST

hear, either

baked ham

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

baked ham — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:35:12 MST

@AGiES: Actually, I'm quite confident that the ONLY word he says that I'm sure about is "downloading." I have tried again and again, and I can't here "learning."

baked ham

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

$Bill$G$ — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:33:33 MST

Go see some of the old DOJ testimony he gave when his company was convicted of being a monopoly - he comes across as either an incompetent fool or an almost child-like terrible liar. He seems terrible when he's put on the spot and under pressure (not that he's Mr Charisma normally, with his $5 hair cut and crummy glasses).

$Bill$G$

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Providence — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:32:05 MST

Sounds like Ozzy Ozborne or something...

Providence

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

d0mino — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:32:01 MST

he clearly tripped over the cord.

d0mino

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

fallingdove — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:31:35 MST

I think that Robo Bill was malfunctioning..

xbox live is unreliable.....Error, error.... Me not downloading.. Restarting in safe mode............/-\:/-\:/-\:/-\:

fallingdove

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Agies — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:31:08 MST

@ChiisaiRamen: No, it's not really a quoted comment. It's Crecente's best, if flawed, attempt at transcribing a muddled sentence.

Agies

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

fuchikoma — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:29:53 MST

"ahhhhh... me not downloading curve... "
I smell a new meme...

fuchikoma

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Chief2BeaR — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:28:53 MST

lol

Chief2BeaR

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Weasal — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:28:07 MST

Bill Gates BBC interview

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Weasal

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Agies — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:28:07 MST

@NeoAkira: The question he is responding to is more about the difference between approaches that Apple and MS have. Apple tends to stay in its own end of the pool, while MS trys its hand at alot of things (tablet PCs, Xbox, DVR...)

Agies

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Koneesha — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:25:48 MST

@kingclip: i know exackly. HE is so funny.

Koneesha

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

ChiisaiRamen — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:25:12 MST

Wow that's a real quoted comment right? Geez reading that made my head hurt faster than reading posts in a really bad forum.

ChiisaiRamen

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Sloopydrew — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:24:19 MST

"me not downloading curve"

Take a stand, Bill! I've heard Curve is a horrible gaming experience. Me not downloading it, either.

As far as the "hiccup" -- it's more like an elongated beer burp. I still can't get to the Marketplace or get an online game going.

Sloopydrew

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Volturi — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:23:43 MST

Well that was ... bizarre.

Maybe its just that I am not an Xbox 360 owner / LIVE subscriber, but it doesn't seem like the "hiccup" he is referring to is the outages over the past couple of weeks. It sounded more like something to do with LIVE at the very beginning... ?

/shrug

I dunno. It just sounded like he was talking about something else. Even though what he ended up saying made absolutely no sense. XD

Volturi

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Peryite — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:23:13 MST

McWhertor's at CES now, right?
Maybe he can sneak up on Bill Gates and scare him. That usually cures my hiccups.

Peryite

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Killtacular — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:21:32 MST

@elint6: No :) I was saying I agree with your original interpretation of what he was saying- that it was about the RROD, not Live issues.

Killtacular

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

FlyLikeAMouse — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:21:23 MST

@captltrl:
Thank Jeebus you aren't Charles Osborne then! (look him up on wikipedia)

FlyLikeAMouse

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Figcoinc — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:21:08 MST

Bill has no clue what is going on in the Xbox end of the company. I bet if you ask a question about Vista he will talk your ear off. Or just stare blankly at you and say, "Wanna play money tag!?"

Figcoinc

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Sparx — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:20:53 MST

@AGiES:

I have to disagree, MS is the biggest "me too" company in the world

Sparx

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Adam In Texas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:20:32 MST

The Gizmodo constant Apple/Microsoft thing in the comment section almost mirrors what we see here on Kotaku with the PS3/360.

It would be funny if every Gawker site had the same thing with two major players going on and the comments sections were always flooded with the two sides taking stabs and defending...or not.

Adam In Texas

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

kingclip — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:20:05 MST

@AGiES: That's the funniest comment of the year. Microsoft is long known for being anything BUT innovative. What they are ridiculously great at is identifying others' good ideas and then creating the best in class for that idea.

kingclip

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elint6 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:19:30 MST

@ killtacular

I don't quite understand what you mean, but I'll try my best to answer. What I'm basically saying, going by the excerpt, is that if you remove the word "Live" from "XBOX Live" then RROD fits the "issue" perfectly because he's talking about the hardware business. Maybe he didn't really mean to say "Live" but the service-oriented Microsoft business strategy (that pushes a service like Live over products, although they are complementary in this case) just got him temporarily confused.

elint6

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

NeoAkira — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:19:08 MST

@AGiES: "MS takes risks in innovation that other companies generally dont try."

I'm not quite sure which part of the 360 is an innovation but ok. Unfortunately even if that is true Miscrosoft seems to fail with these innovations (RRoD & Vista)

NeoAkira

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

FlyLikeAMouse — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:18:08 MST

Is it wrong that I have a little Portal related chuckle whenever I see the words "huge " and "success" in the same sentence these days.

FlyLikeAMouse

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

CaptLtrl — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:17:01 MST

If I had the hiccups for over 2 weeks, I would probably start to contemplate suicide.

CaptLtrl

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Agies — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:16:08 MST

@Sparx88: Go watch the whole video. This is exactly what he's talking about; MS takes risks in innovation that other companies generally dont try.

Agies

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Adam In Texas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:15:38 MST

Yeah, the Live issues are a "Hiccup"

...if we are taking about something like Jennifer Mee and the 5 weeks of hiccups she had.

Adam In Texas

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Belain — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:15:11 MST

Was that bill gates, or a beauty pagent question and answer transcript?

Belain

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Bluespruce — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:14:59 MST

"or maybe he mentions peanuts," Very funny, I can not stop laughing.

Bluespruce

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Agies — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:13:58 MST

He definitely says learning curve, not downloading curve.

Agies

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Sparx — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:13:14 MST

Just like all the windows programs experience "hiccups" the first couple years right? Yeah XP may be good now but it wasnt long ago it was getting thrashed worse than Vista. For computing "experts" they sure have a lot of these so called "hiccups"

Sparx

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Killtacular — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:12:45 MST

@elint6: I don't see how anyone else could interpret this differently. I know, you have to go on what the interviewer states, but just from the text, well...

Killtacular

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elliottsa — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:11:31 MST

Someone needs to ctrl+alt+del him. Time for a reboot Bill.

elliottsa

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elint6 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:11:31 MST

@ brian crecente
Thanks for the clarification. Now, I just want to agree with peryite.

elint6

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Ningen — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:09:53 MST

"We had a hiccup in terms of ahhhhh..."

Well obviously he was getting a BJ when the interview was going on.

Ningen

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Brian Crecente — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:09:12 MST

@elint6: I spoke with Wilson Rothman who did the interview and he says he believes Gates was talking about Live, because it was one of the things they had been talking about not during this clip as well.

Brian Crecente

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elint6 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:08:27 MST

@neoakira:
no, he doesnt, but somehow I feel he was never talking about the Xbox Live issue. He just had some issue expressing his thoughts, but he was referring the entire time to the RROD issue as a "hiccup."

elint6

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Peryite — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:07:42 MST

If a man of his wealth and stature can't seem to make sense, I see no reason to continue trying my best to avoid grammatical mistakes.

Peryite

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

baked ham — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:07:07 MST

Now that I think about it, this quote is pretty strong evidence that Bill Gates is a robot, and he had been running conflicting script there, which caused the equivalent of a verbal blue screen of death.

baked ham

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

yashichi8bit — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:06:10 MST

Hmm, that definitely looked and sounded like he was stopping himself from revealing something.

Though I think what he meant for "me not downloading curve" was probably "we underestimated the downloading curve" as in its been more successful than we anticipated

yashichi8bit

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

NeoAkira — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:06:09 MST

@elint6:

he still doesn't explain what's up with Live tho

NeoAkira

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

baked ham — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:05:39 MST

I've become incapable of writing in English after reading that quote.

baked ham

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

elint6 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:04:45 MST

He's talking about the RROD issue--that's the one major reliability issue they've run into. He was referring to the whole XBOX business unit as "XBOX Live," that's why he mentions that Microsoft "hadn't been in the hardware business." XBOX Live isn't a hardware business but the XBOX and XBOX 360 are.

elint6

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

baked ham — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:04:21 MST

WHAT!?? That's possibly most nonsense I've ever heard from a non-institutionalized mouth.

baked ham

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Kyle81 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:03:20 MST

Say what?

Kyle81

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

Tonx — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:02:32 MST

"Me not downloading curve?" File this one away for best quote of 2008. It may actually win.

So... the reliability of Live ran into a downloading curve, a risky venture to begin with, which caused a hiccup issue. Geez, even translated, that doesn't make sense.

Tonx

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

El Patricko — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:01:02 MST

DUBYA TEE EFF?!

El Patricko

Gates: Live Outage a "Hiccup"

rlh445 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:00:09 MST

Forgive Bill..he was too busy counting his billions of dollars to focus completely on what he was saying.

rlh445