[opendtv] Re: Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play By?
- From: John Willkie <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 10:29:07 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Actually, NBC has some very high-quality content, to wit the Law & Order
franchise. They also have a lot of less-than-high-quality content, which I
know little about because I choose to not participate.
They have also started to spread the less-than-high-quality content year-round.
As for your whining about NBC wanting premium pricing for their content on
iTunes, this is content that I can watch and record for free (my units do not
respect the broadcast flag.)
Funny that you didn't mention smelly Steve capitulating to HBO's demands for
premium pricing. Compare and contrast, please.
As for Vista, there are issues, but I believe they are greatly overstated, and
the spots only support the smug smarminess of Apple users. Wow! Apples' PC
market share has gone up 50% (from 2% to 3% of the total market). What a
success for the company that took computer out of it's name, and ONCE had
almost 100% of the market before they learned the finer points of
cream-skinning.
A week or so back, I was talking to the VP of Engineering of one of the
network-owned station groups. He's very serious about reliability. I asked
him if he had any personal Vista boxes running and how reliable they were. He
told me that he had two running in his office at that very moment, including
one with Vista Ultimate (I didn't ask if it was the Platinum extension) running
Office 2008 Ultimate.
"Did you buy the boxes with Vista pre-installed?"
"No, I built them up from scratch." He bragged about being a member of
Microsoft TechNet. Maybe that helped.
However, the DRM/DVD burning issues have led me to consider a Mac with
Parallels installed. I've been there before. Then, I look at the pricing. I
won't pay monoploy rents to also-rans. So far.
John Willkie
-----Original Message-----
>From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: May 24, 2008 4:22 AM
>To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [opendtv] Re: Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media
>Center Play By?
>
>At 4:35 PM -0700 5/23/08, John Willkie wrote:
>>MS is entitled to make a fool of themselves, and has taken full
>>advantage of that "right" at least a few times.
>
>All of this does more to illustrate just how far out of touch with
>consumers the media conglomerates and Microsoft have gotten.
>
>Vista is a basket case, in part because of "bloatware," and in part
>because of the Draconian DRM schemes that Microsoft has implemented
>to control the customer - for themselves and for third parties that
>MS wants to play nice with.
>
>NBC has seen a huge decline in ratings, in part because the content
>sucks and in part because they are treating consumers like criminals.
>Apple creates a legal download market for NBC content and NBC tells
>Steve where to stick it because he won't let NBC stick it to
>consumers with variable pricing.
>
>Maybe both companies should read "The Pirates Dilemma" How Youth
>Culture Reinvented Capitalism"
>
>http://thepiratesdilemma.com/
>
> From a review on ARS Technica
>http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-2008-05.ars
>
>"Now, some acts of piracy are "quite simply theft," but others are
>more complicated than that. American cinema and cable television were
>founded as outlaw institutions (there's a reason that Hollywood
>flourished as far away from DC and New York as it was possible to
>get). Piracy, in Mason's view, is actually an American institution
>that the Founders would have been proud of. "During the nineteenth
>century Industrial Revolution, the Founding Fathers pursued a policy
>of counterfeiting European inventions, ignoring global patents, and
>stealing intellectual property wholesale."
>
>"The situation lasted for so long that Dickens was still complaining
>about it when he toured the US and found pirated editions of his
>books everywhere. Americans were so known for piracy that they were
>eventually branded Yankees, from the Dutch "Janke," slang for a
>pirate."
>
>Regards
>Craig
>
>
>
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