Blues Over the Olympic Games

The Los Angeles Times (Blogs) has published this complaint about Silverlight and the Olympics.

NBC's Olympic video site leaves many out to dry

[...]

And computers running the Linux operating system -- an open-source alternative to Windows -- were also left out of the mix. When unlucky users try to fire up the video player to catch a few rounds of pingpong, they'll instead be greeted by a screenful of technical requirements that their computer doesn't meet. Next time you'll call it table tennis...

[...]

But in dozens of comments on our initial post, unhappy Mac and Linux users thought NBC still should've provided a way for all Web surfers to watch Olympic clips.

Watch some of the comments:

NBC Olympics not only cheated iMAC+Linux users it cheated Windows users too. The video does not play at all. All in the name of quality. NBC and GE will not go free!!

[...]

It's infuriating to be summarily left out just because I choose to use a superior OS, Linux, instead of the crap M$ puts out. Oh well, I guess NBC doesn't care how many viewers--and, yes, we ARE viewers as well, not just people online--they're alienating by their idiotic decision to go with a Micro$oft only application. What morons...

SJVN writes about the gigantic blue screen of death and he ends it with another shrewd nugget of information.

Why? Because, according to the Morning Herald, both the Beijing Olympics committee and Lenovo, a major backer of the games, had deliberately chosen to run XP operating system on the games' PC because they didn't trust Vista. Turns out they shouldn't have trusted XP either, but they should have known that. Best of all, Lenovo chairman, Yang Yuanqing, said Lenovo had chosen not to use Vista because, "If it's not stable, it could have some problems."

So, next time you go to an online PC sales Web site and you see that line about "We recommend Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium," just remember: They're lying.

Axe Over Windows

Did you know that "Midori" is actually GNU/Linux?

It's true: Microsoft has confirmed that it's abandoning Windows as we know it. Cagey as ever, the Microsofties won't say when it'll happen, but they have talked a little bit about what the next OS is going to look like--or not look like.

[...]

Midori for Linux?

One of my smarter-than-me buddies, Gary F., told me that Linus Torvalds worked on something called Midori a few years ago, an embedded Linux for mobile devices: "I doubt Microsoft would ever release something that could be traced back to Linux, but if I recall correctly, Transmeta's Midori had some rudimentary 'cloud computing' features vaguely similar to Microsoft's Midori." Read "Details emerge on Transmeta's "Mobile Linux" and "Transmeta Exports Midori Linux to China" for details.

Paul at InfoWorld is rather dissatisfied with Windows Vista.

However, I'm not going to be staying in Vista-land. Since I do have other choices, I still prefer Mac OS X and Linux.

The Start menu in Vista (and all other iterations) has become far too ornery for me. Navigating to new apps, or to find apps is annoying and too clumsy.

[...]

I was quite annoyed that when common devices such as mice, USB flash drives, and so on were inserted into the system, it takes Vista quite a long time to locate and install the drivers. In Linux and Mac OS X, these devices are usable nearly instantly.

Microsoft is Down

Watch this eye-opener.

Summer traffic up for Google, down for Microsoft

The lazy days of summer on the Internet seem to be a boon for Google and Yahoo, but not Microsoft.

Spotting the trend yet? According to this, MSN search sank from 9.85% in June 2007 to just 5.46% last month.

Microsoft Under Fire

26 new flaws and 6 "critical" patches yesterday.

"People are going to be quite busy with this load," said Jason Miller, security data team leader for Shavlik Technologies, a patch-management software provider in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Security-wise, Vista is a mess. Here's what Bruce Schneier said about the latest blow:

This is huge...

Google tries cleaning up the mess that Windows zombies are leaving (over 100,000,000,000 SPAM per day).

Anyone wanting to learn more about related issues has been invited to attend a webinar called "How spam is changing your inbox, and what to do about it."

These Windows zombies are not only used to SPAM people. They are being used to suspend entire countries. It's like cyber-war.

Danchev and others have found evidence that points to a self-starting militia composed of volunteer hackers and cyber criminals who control large-scale bots, or collections of previously-compromised computers, as behind the escalating attacks that have knocked Georgian sites offline.