Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Here’s a cool use of Microsoft Surface to illustrate the political landscape as the US approaches the presidential election:

In the video, they show shifts of voters moving from undecided to one party or another as a result of recent campaigning and the choices made for Vice President.

VIDEO:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/
vp/26610613#26610613

I was reading the comments in a Gizmodo article about the Xbox 360 price drop and I thought I’d take this opportunity to answer some of the… uh… questions from the comments crowd.

COST
Q:  Why is the Elite is worth twice as much as the arcade?
A:  To be clear, the Arcade is $199 and the Elite is $399.  The reason the Elite is more expensive is because it comes with:
– 120GB Hard Drive ($189)
– HDMI Cable ($49)
– Headset/Communictor headset ($29)
There is additive value to purchasing the Elite as a package however if a customer decides that they don’t need the accessories that the Elite has, they can always purchase just what they need ala carte.

Q:  Why is the 120GB hard drive $189 when I can get a 1TB drive at Costco for the same cost?
A:  As with most hardware associated with Xbox 360, the 120GB hard drive is not priced for the sake of making money.  The cost of the drive is squarely the result of the “security-specific electronics” engineered into our storage.  The bottom line is that any given 2.5” drive is generally going to cost X and after that, the drive manufacturer (Seagate, or whomever) has to commit to manufacturing it for the life of the console and such a committal generally implies a slightly higher price.  Once done, the drive often has several customizations – not the least of which is security oriented I/O filtering, all of which raise the cost of the unit.  This I/O filtering prevents anything except an Xbox 360 from putting content on to the drive for execution to prevent viruses and malicious content from spreading to games and Xbox Live. This incidentally, is the reason traditional USB hard drives don’t work for storing anything but media content.  When asked about the PS3’s ability to use external hard drives for storage, the Xbox Dev team basically said that they supposed that Sony isn’t as interested in consumer security as Microsoft is.

PERFORMANCE
Q:  Is Sony Playstation 3 hardware “more advanced”?
A:  The Xbox 360 provides better performance, greater flexibility, and ultimately a better gaming experience than Playstation 3 in most every scenario.  It’s well known that the Xbox 360 has been a much better environment for game developers to write to allowing faster game releases and the ability to release titles for Xbox vs other platforms however disregarding that fact, there are several critical metrics to the gaming experience that Xbox 360 & any other consoles should be measured by:
1) General Purpose CPU Performance
2) Floating Point CPU Performance
3) GPU Shader Performance
4) Memory System Bandwidth
Xbox 360 provably outperforms Sony Playstation 3 in all of these except Floating Point CPU performance which was a deliberate design choice.  Contrary to some erroneous reports CPU-based floating point instruction work is not a very significant element gaming.

Q:  Why doesn’t Xbox 360’s CPU emphasize floating point CPU computation?
A:  Because, put simply, geometric calculations which are what floating point calculations are traditionally used for in games, are handed off to the GPU – not the general CPU.  There is a perception that the 7 DSP processors of the Cell processor makes for superior graphics capabilities because “it has more” and that’s not the case. 
To quote some of the Advanced Technology Gaming gurus we have, “Sony’s CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.”

This is a document that does a great job in comparing the two hardware platforms.

http://cid-00da410c7f7e038d.skydrive.live.com/embedrowdetail.aspx/ProductMaterial/Xbox360vsPS3.xps

We design Windows operating systems to perform well out of the box. However, many factors affect actual performance: firmware design, applications that load at system startup, memory and I/O components, and the built-in capabilities of system components such as graphics, storage, and networking devices.

To help system designers and manufacturers, we provide tools and information for the design and tuning of systems for best performance.

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 System Performance

• Interrupt-Affinity Policy Tool
• Windows Performance Tools Kit, v.4.1.1 (QFE)
•  Measuring Performance in Windows Vista
•  Measuring System Resume Performance on Windows Vista
•  On/Off Transition Performance Analyzer
•  Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008
•  Windows PC Accelerators: Performance Technology for Windows Vista
•  Windows Server Performance Team Blog

Performance and Assessment – WinHEC 2006

•  Hybrid Hard Disk & ReadyDrive™ Technology: Improving Performance and Power for Windows Vista Mobile PCs [WinHEC 2006; 968 KB]
•  Windows Vista Performance Technologies [WinHEC 2006; 439 KB]
•  Windows Vista System Requirements and WinSAT [WinHEC 2006; 460 KB]

LINK:  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/default.mspx

Project managers now have a new Quick Reference Guide to help them use Project Server 2007 

This quick reference guide is designed to assist project managers with using Microsoft Office Project Web Access to view, analyze, and report on information, create proposals and activity plans, and to manage project resources.

This Word template can be downloaded and printed out for easy assistance while you work.

DOWNLOAD: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC102865051033.aspx?pid=CT101441451033

Wow.  The guys in Xbox Business Strategy sure know what they’re doing.  The other day, we reduced the price on the Xbox below $199 and Xbox 360 sales at Amazon.com went absolutely through the roof.

• Arcade Edition increased by 1,712% and held the #25 ranking in the Video Games area of Amazon
• Pro Edition increased by 502% to hold the #23 ranking
• Elite Edition increased 231% to hold a #64 ranking

So I guess now, the Xbox 360 is officially cheaper than the Nintendo Wii.

LINK:  http://news.punchjump.com/article.php?id=6657

There’s an entire issue of Technet Magazine coming out that focuses on Virtualization, obviously highlighting our strategy around System Center-based Virtual Datacenter Management & our Hypervisor, Hyper-V.

Here’s an index of the articles that are published online from the physical magazine:

• Virtualization: An Introduction to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
  The introduction of Hyper-V makes virtualization an even more compelling solution for IT environments. Get an overview of today’s virtualization market and see how Hyper-V improves the manageability, reliability, and security of virtualization Rajiv Arunkundram
• Virtualization: Manage Your Virtual Environments with VMM 2008
  System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a consolidated interface for managing your virtual infrastructure. The latest version adds support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, as well as for VMware virtual machines. Explore the new features and get an overview of using VMM to centralize your management tasks. Edwin Yuen
• Virtualization: Getting Started with Microsoft Application Virtualization
  Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) allows you to deliver virtualized desktops to client systems throughout your organization. This simplifies system management and liberates employees from their desktops. Take a close look at how App-V works and discover how you can deploy it in your organization. Anthony Kinney
• Virtualization: Achieving High Availability for Hyper-V
  Consolidating servers onto fewer physical machines has many advantages, but it is extremely important that you plan for your systems to be highly available. Here’s a guide to using Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to bring high availability to your Hyper-V virtual machines. Steven Ekren
• Virtualization: Backup and Disaster Recovery for Server Virtualization
  Virtualization brings significant changes to disaster recovery. Here’s an introduction to how the Microsoft virtualization platform factors into your disaster recovery plan, as well as a deeper look into backup and restore options and considerations for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Adam Fazio
• Virtualization: Essential Tools for Planning Your Virtual Infrastructure
  Is your infrastructure ready for virtualization? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, a network-wide infrastructure assessment tool, can help you better understand your IT infrastructure and determine whether your systems are ready for upgrade or migration to a variety of technologies, including virtualization. Jay Sauls and Baldwin Ng

LINK:  http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/archive/2008/09/04/special-edition-of-technet-magazine-on-virtualization.aspx

Effectively Share Data Across Teams with Microsoft Office Project 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

In today’s new world of work, it’s not enough just to “do your work” or “manage your project.” With teams that are doing more with less, you need to share your work across the organization and collaborate in “real” time.

Projects come in all shapes and sizes and are everywhere across the organization. Businesses rely on the successful completion of these projects to improve market share and revenue. Almost all organizations struggle today to find the right tools to effectively plan, communicate, track, and analyze their work across teams.

A Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project 2007 based solution can offer simplicity and power. By combining Microsoft Office Project 2007 with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, project managers and anyone else responsible for managing a team, can effectively schedule work, assign tasks, and communicate team responsibilities. 

Microsoft partners, LMR Solutions and EPM Live, will show how you can take advantage of two familiar and widely used Microsoft Office applications: Microsoft Office Project 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a powerful Enterprise Project and Work Management solution. You will also hear how Avery Dennison has used this solution to improve cross- team collaboration in their organization.

Who Should Attend:
Anyone who manages projects and collaborates with other team members.

• Managers and Directors of IT, Engineering, R&D, Sales/Marketing, Finance or HR
• Project Managers and Directors

We are limiting the size of the event to the first 30 guests to facilitate collaborative discussion.

Agenda:

9:00am – 9:30am

Do you have a clear understanding of what Software as a Services is and what “Cloud computing” means, at least as it pertains to today’s IT industry?

Here is a whitepaper and a blog post that can be useful in understanding both SaaS & Cloud Computing.  They’re from people you may have heard about: David Chappell – industry expert in Technology Directions & Application Architecture and John Osborn who has a blog on O’Reilly.

• O’Reilly Blog:
  Post on Software as a Service
  http://news.oreilly.com/2008/08/david-chappells-taxonomy-of-cl.html
• David Chappell’s Whitepaper: 
  “A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms:  An Enterprise-oriented View”
  http://www.davidchappell.com/CloudPlatforms–Chappell.pdf

Just announced: BizTalk Server 2009. 
(See Biztalk Server roadmap here:  http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/
us/roadmap.aspx)

The release schedule appears to remain unchanged from the 2006 R3 version, with an expected release date in H1 CY09.  There should also be a CTP release in Q4 CY08.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisromp/archive/2008/09/05/biztalk-server-2009.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx#WhereWereGoing
• http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2008/09/05/biztalk-server-2009.aspx
• http://seroter.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/goodbye-biztalk-2006-r3-hello-biztalk-2009/

Summary of Changes, Additions
(See Chris Romp’s blog for more details)

Updated Platform Support

• New Application Platform Support

• New Hyper-V Virtualization Support

• Improved Failover Clustering

Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services

• New Web Services Registry

• New Line of Business Adapters

• Enhanced Host Systems Integration

• Enhanced Business Activity Monitoring

• Enhanced Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance 

Business to Business Integration

• Enhanced Support for EDI and AS2 Protocols

• Updated SWIFT Support

• Device Connectivity

• New Mobile RFID Platform and device management

• New RFID industry standards support

Developer and Team Productivity

• New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) support

• Enhanced Developer Productivity

Other Enhancements

• Messaging

• Administration

This is so cool, it ‘goes to 11’. 

MSNBC is using our ultra-high definition photography to give you the opportunity to view a multi-gigapixel photo of the floor of the Republican National Convention.

You can ‘pan’ and ‘zoom’ into the photo to a ridiculous degree.  The ‘zoom’ is so good, you can look at the expressions on individuals facts very clearly.  It’s kind of like an adult “Where’s Waldo?”

First of all, you need to install the HD View plug in from Microsoft Research:

• INSTALL: 
  http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDInstall.htm

Here’s the photo used on MSNBC:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain makes his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. (John Brecher / msnbc.com)

• MSNBC Photo:
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
  26552359/

There are better photos available – like the one used in the TEDTalk a few years ago of Seattle.

• OTHER HD VIEW DEMOS:
  http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDGigapixel.htm