Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things:
Bill Gates got into a shouting match with Sony CEO Howard Stringer over Sony's support for Blu-Ray, a stupid DRM standard for suck-ass next-gen DVDs, arguing that Microsoft's sellout suck-ass next-gen HD-DVDs are better.
Me, I say they all suck ass. The idea that the entertainment industry should design next-gen technology is hilariously stupid. These are the dumbasses who are calling for mandatory watermark detectors on analog-to-digital converters, after all. They still believe in crazy snake-oil like robust watermarks! They believe that it's practical to control the design of analog-to-digital converters, even though high school science students often build them as class projects!
This is ideological science, Soviet in its approach: like the Soviet apparats who insisted that it was possible to make ideologically correct weeds that would magically transform themselves into wheat; these boneheads insist that it's possible to make computers and networks that are less-good at copying files.
Gates has lain down with dogs and now he's waking up with fleas. Inviting the entertainment industry to design Windows for him was a move of such breathtaking commercial stupidity that it's hard to credit. Where's that monopolist swagger when we need it?
2:21 AM
Dilettante Archives