rec.autos.simulators

John Browne, or anyone else who's authorized to represent Microsoft:

On 12/15/97 Microsoft's John Browne made an ostensibly genuine offer to
monitor this newgroup, listen to valid complaints, answer questions as
time permits, and get his team to implement as many fixes as possible.
From that time to this, the only other message Mr. Browne has posted is
this one, on the following day, December 16, 1997:

Date:         1997/12/16

Newsgroups:   rec.autos.simulators

Thanks for all the kind words. Let the fracas begin!

--
Cheers,
John Browne
MS CART Team>>

Since that post, there have been more than 150 posts in this newsgroup
concerning (and most concerned ABOUT) the fabled CPR Patch; none of the
posts have been from anyone directly representing John Browne's MS CART
Team or MS, as far as I can see. Recently, many people have asked
directly: is this the final patch? If it is, then most people believe
Microsoft is FAR from having a viable product.

It should be a simple matter for Microsoft, who, we're assured, is
monitoring this NG, to give a simple yes or no answer. If they do not
answer, then one has to take the following statements by John Browne at
their MOST pessimistic (all from the post of 12/15/97):

"We're working on a patch. It is totally a response to some of the
comments made on r.a.s., many of which we agree with. A list of items
addressed in the patch has been forwarded up to this ng, and most of
them
will indeed be in the patch. A couple of items may not make it."

"The patch won't make the game perfect."

"Whenever you decide to enter a mature category, you have the daunting
challenge of trying to catch up. You can either spend years developing a
product, during which time your competition
also matures and raises the bar you have to meet, thus sending you back
to the drawing board repeatedly, or you can get something out on the
street and revise it like crazy. In reality neither plan is optimal but
the latter is a little more doable than the former here at MS." (!)

"This doesn't mean you can ship an inferior V1 product, because you
still have to compete on your own merits against the competition, but it
does mean you sometimes have to stage your development process and goals
into long-term milestones."

"Observing a bug is different from finding one and finding one is
different from fixing it. Sometimes you see or hear of people who see
something which is weird but no matter how hard you try you can't get it
to happen again. Not much you can do with that until you can get a repro
scenario. Even if you can consistently repro a bug, it doesn't mean you
can fix it. It might be that the problem is in someone else's code
(drivers, for example). It might be that the only fix will break
something else. It might be something else. I don't believe any piece of
code from any vendor in the world ever got shipped with zero bugs and
ours is no different. We sweat every bug and don't take any of them
lightly."

"I hope I'm not astonishing anyone on this newsgroup when I point out
that engineering is the science of tradeoffs [I thought that was
politics -- BB], and that nothing comes for free.
Given unlimited time, resources, and intelligence anything is possible
but no one wants to wait that long <g>. So we wind up looking sometimes
at hard choices.

I will monitor this ng and will be happy to post replies to questions as
time permits [apparently it hasn't]. Unfortuantely [sic] (or
fortunately) it's a very large and active newsgroup and sometimes the
signal to noise ratio is not ideal [substitute "desirable" for "ideal"].
But I'll do what I can. [And that is...?]

"If, after reading this, you want to continue to bash Microsoft or CPR,
that's fine with me...I'd like to spend my time discussing things that
are based in fact ..."

Well, John -- here's your opportunity to tell us about something based
in fact: is this latest patch, in fact, the final patch of MSCPR for the
forseeable future? If so, will those unhappy with the latest patch, but
who have held on to their copies of CPR in the hope that Microsoft would
do the right thing, be able to get their money back, now that Microsoft
has had to make one of their regrettable "hard choices"? If it's NOT the
final patch, do you have some sort of timetable you might share with the
NG as to when MS will fish or cut bait?

Thanks for your monitoring

Bart Brown

I agree 100%.  Did you c.c. Mr. Browne on your post?  If not, please do so.
If the lack of response in r.a.s. is due to a lack of monitoring, that's one
thing.  If they are simply refusing to answer, that is most regrettable.  A
regret that the people here can decide how seriously to punish.

Marc, yes I did CC Mr. Browne on the two posts on this subject. The fact
that people have been asking this simple question for two weeks with no
answer -- definitive or otherwise -- from Microsoft speaks volumes,
don't you think? Here's the guy who came rolling into the NG like a
drill sergeant, promising no more nonsense after the untimely departure
of his blubbering subaltern, telling the NG that he'd listen to the
smart people, but that he didn't have the time or bandwidth to waste on
"anti-Microsoft" forces. Well, the smart people have spoken, and there
doesn't seem to be a single experienced gamer who thinks the effort as
represented by Microsoft's latest/last/? patch is the true goods. And
when was the last time anyone saw an update? Does this mean that the MS
CART Team has reached their operational budget fulcrum point, and they
feel that further expense in man hours does not compute to a concomitant
potential for increased sales; that they have reached the point of
diminishing returns at which, while they may lose the miniscule
demographic segment represented here by a hard-core group of gamers,
they'll  still make enough off the Christmas sheep to keep the project
in the red?

There's only, as i said, one group of people who can answer this -- and
it's obvious *they* ain't talkin'.

Bart Brown

Bart

(snip)
to keep the project in the red?
(unsnip)

Ummm, Bart, I think you mean 'in the *black*'!!

No business would want to be kept 'in the red'!! :-)

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)

Unless of course you are the United States Government ;)

Scott