CyberbrineDreams

The economy must be getting better as one of my credit card companies feels that the best use of its money is to overnight me a several pound 14”x9”x10.5” package with bubble wrap, filler, two ice packs in a styrofoam box to send me a 3.5oz box of Godiva chocolates to thank me for being a “valued customer”.

I would have thought news like this would have RBS conserving money not sending out gifts. But then again what do I know? Perhaps that’s why they are paid the Big Bucks (or British Pounds as the case may be) and I’m not.

For some reason I did not do the annual report. For 2009 the EDD BU made $169m for the year. Using the other 3 quarter’s numbers that means the BU lost $129m in 2009Q4. A profitable year which is good, but much less profitable than last year with a sharp down turn at the end which is not good.

On a positive note 1010Q1 was excellent with EDD’s net revenue being $312m, getting close to their best ever quarter (2008Q2, $334m), and this time they did not have the Halo 3 $200m bump. For a week in September they even caught up with the Wii weekly sales but since then Wii sales have jumped to two times XBox360 sales (by units sold).

With this good quarter this brings the EDD BU’s net loss (revenue – expenses) down to $6.339 billion since the XBox was launched.

The Vista Clock Gadget is so realistic that apparently it needs to be wound up occasionally.

It was 3:40pm when the image was grabbed.

I guess the ~7000 blogspams posted over the last week and a half I just deleted means someone has defeated the capcha scheme I’ve been using :-)

It never seems to surprise how much money the various mobile phone carriers will leave on the table.

I have a bit of money to burn for my birthday coming up in September. I’ve always wanted to have some backup internet access in case I’m on vacation or I have an outage at the house when I need it. Up to this point I’ve been a bit disappointed in that none on the major carriers have a pay as you go data option taht has decent coverage.

On paper the good news is Verizon now offers Daypass an option to get 3G access to the internet for $15 for 24 hours of access. It’s expensive but if you need it for just a couple of days a year it’s worth it.

The crux is you need a wireless card which according to the daypass docs:

“To purchase a Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband USB modem or ExpressCard, call 800-786-8419, visit a Verizon Wireless store or speak to your Verizon Wireless sales representative. Click here for information on select notebooks with Mobile Broadband Built-In.”

And thus lies the problem. After having visited their website, two of their stores and having called their 1-800 number I’ve found it’s not possible to buy their modems without buying a non-daypass plan.

So to use their non-plan plan you have to buy a plan.

As my dear wife put it, apparently I’m the first non-reviewer customer to actually attempt to buy their product.

Look in a few months for Verizon to cancel their daypass plan for lack of interest since customers who are interested in in cannot enroll in in unless they already have a plan and thus don’t need it.

It’s full of *-ware nastiness! Bad iPhone! Bad!

This is the sort of thing that drives programmers mad…

Consider the following C# code:

  Color inputColor = Color.White;
  Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(1, 1);
  bitmap.SetPixel(0, 0, inputColor);
  Color outputColor = bitmap.GetPixel(0, 0);
  if (inputColor == outputColor)
    Console.WriteLine("Same color");
  else
    Console.WriteLine("Different color");
  if (inputColor.Equals(outputColor))
    Console.WriteLine("Same color");
  else
    Console.WriteLine("Different color");

You would expect the output to be:

Same color
Same color

and of course you would be wrong.

Why?

Because inputColor is a named color (White, RGBA) and outputColor is an unnamed color (RGBA).

Obvious huh?

According to their annual report Nintendo sold more Wiis in the last year than Microsoft has sold XBox360s in the last three years. Or Sony seeing PS/3s in the last 2.5 years.

So…

In 2007 they brought in $2.5 million/per employee
In 2008 they brought in $1.6 million/per employee (they bought some factories and significantly increased their head count)

I’ve not seen what the 2009 numbers are yet per employee.

Must be nice to be able to print your own money….

I was looking up when to try to see Star Trek Friday and saw that was out today…

Counting on the fact that maybe a lot of other people did not realize it was out until Friday I left my house 25 min before the movie (previews really) to find that I was ticket #36 for a 250 person theater.

Verdict? The new film is a good reboot of the series. Worth seeing.

I usually don’t like the video version of The Onion (I personally find it works better in it text) I did like this segment.

Well the Big News today was Microsoft had its first year-to-year loss in its history.

However, I’m more interested in my mild obsession: the Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD), who’s primary income and expense comes from the XBox 360. They lost $31m compared to making $106m same time last year. Revenue was down only 2%.

Interestingly enough they first blame the poor performance on Apple software sales. Apparently Office 2008 for the Mac is down 63%. They go on to explain this as because Mac sales are down.

According to Apple’s 10Q Mac sales are down 3% this year so I’m guessing that the real Office for the Mac problems are:

• Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac was not very well received.
• Microsoft Office for the Mac is no longer considered a requirement since there are now several good alternatives that range from $0 to $99.

Strangely enough I would have thought that Office 2008 for the Mac would have been part of the Microsoft Business Division (MBU) with Office for Windows but I’m wrong. I guess that’s why I’m not paid the big bucks.

Later in the 10Q they mention the real culprit: R&D expenses are up $66m due primarily to increased headcount.

So this brings the EDD’s net loss (revenue – expenses) up to $6.664 billion since the XBox was launched.