uk, tech, rant

From BBC and Microsoft sign agreement

"Bill Gates said: "Microsoft's strength is in driving digital innovation, and our vision is to open up rich, new consumer experiences that allow people to enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Driving Digital Innovation

Wrong. They buy (or just rip off others) innovation, they spend a lot on marketing, they are a massively successfull business.

They rarely drive innovation in anything technical, digital or otherwise. Apple introduced the iPod in 2001.

Microsoft's media player will arrive in November 2006, provided it isn't subject to a typical MS slippage.

The first conceptions of the Playstation date back to 1986 (from wikipedia)

Microsoft's XBox was official announced in 2000.

allow people to enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device

This is so totally untrue it makes you spray the coffee you were just about to drink all over the wall, then take another sip and just do it all again.

VLC works on almost ANY platform and plays almost ANY content.

Microsoft's players work on Windows and maybe Apple's Mac platform. Not Linux, not BSD, not many many mobile phone platforms. (Yes they can be made to work - but you actually have to break the law to do so).

Microsoft sues anyone who tries to let legally bought content in their format be played on something Microsoft didn't allow, and the bad evil DRM technology that Microsoft built and pushed on users is specifically and pretty much only about stopping people playing what they legally own "anywhere, anytime"

In short, Bill Gates is just plain wrong.

The fact that the BBC are reporting such twoddle, never mind that they are falling for one of the oldest IT tricks in the book and about to get sucker punched by Microsoft, is sadly the much more important element to this story.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.