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Bill Gates, Entertainment God?
ppgreat sent in a wired story about the home of the future sort of story discussing A/V in a Microsoft Media Player 9 future. As seems to always be the case, there's a lot of cool stuff in there, but more than a few eyebrow raises.
You know you've got to wonder about an alternate reality where Bill Gates and MS didn't exist. Would it be this utopian society where software was cheap and there were plenty of interoperable products and platforms? Or would software be just as expensive, we'd still be arguing PC/MAC, and someone else would be standing there in the void maybe Jobs or Ellison or maybe IBM would be the one we'd be complaining about. Or would it be even worse, more expensive software, more fragmentation and just a bunch of small time jack asses running around being pains in the ass to the community.
Today who made their carreer because of Microsoft? In the absence of MS who would rise to power? I shudder to think if it were Ellison in Gates position or Steve Case....
It reminds me of a story I read where someone travels back in time to avert a disaster and each time a bigger disaster results from the intervention until finally the person goes back and allows the first disaster to take place. Lesser of two evils I guess.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
nstead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen...
It's blue with a message for you "Explorer has caused an exception fault ..." This might be because your taxes or some other bill was late or deemed incorrect.
The lights and heat automatically fine-tune to your preference the moment you cross the threshold.
A cross licensing agreement with your power company insures maximum profits for them rather than comfort for you.
A screen on the wall in the foyer reads your email aloud as you hang your coat.
It's hotmail telling you about penis enlargers over and over again. You have 137 new messages since leaving work.
Run a chicken pot pie beneath the barcode reader on the microwave and it sets the time and temperature. Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about ...
The next sentence is a paid comercial advertisment for food you don't want to buy. What you eat is sold to the highest bidder by Microsoft and they irritate you out loud trying to get you to buy something different. You also had to repeat the word "delete" several times for this while you were hanging your coat and walking to the kitchen before you gave up in disgust and told the computer to "shut up". The computer asked if you were sure.
And digital media is everywhere. "Suspicious Minds" greets you in full-home surround sound. The family's collective music library is accessible from any room, on every device.
True, any "trusted" device will be able to talk to the media server and it will be able to display exactly what M$, RIAA and the MPAA want you to see. Once the hardware lock in is achieved, the eHome experiment will be obsolete. You will only be able to run one version of Word that you pay for by the minute. Options like search and replace costs extra. No material deemed "copyright infringing", including your own media, will work. All your old movies, songs and pictures are now "obsolete" and unnecessary because you can rent anything you want that the media cartels feel it's profitable to make available. It will look very much like cable TV and broadcast radio. Equipment that records music that can be played on such a system will be tightly controled through patenets, copyrights and laws like the DMCA.
Oh yeah, your house will be listening to you. The listening devices can cancel the noises the system creates so that your voices can be recorded loud and clear. Carnivore was just the beginning, though it will still be searching your email, search fees added to your taxes, of course.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.