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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.
And since it has NOTHING to do with the SCO LAWSUIT, it isn't "stuff that matters"!
Well if you consider Satan a god then maybe.
says Poole, an almost cherubic character with bushy eyebrows beneath a dark shock of hair, and pouty, inviting puckered boy-lips, just aching fro some HARD MAN COCK
They will as long as Microshaft has a line or more of code in any of it.
For those who don't click links, here's the article.
The front door on this house has no keyhole. Which is not to say it's vulnerable. Security couldn't be more important at 16100 NE 159th Avenue. There's the future to protect.
Instead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen, a biometric scanner, and a smartcard reader. Go ahead and make eye contact; if you're a match, you'll pass through into your future home - a time and place a half-dozen years from now when your living quarters will recognize you, communicate with you, and anticipate your every need.
Your future home may seem familiar at first. You still dig stainless steel appliances, exposed beams, blond hardwood floors, halogen track lighting, and rice-paper shades. But beyond the aesthetics, everything has changed. The lights and heat automatically fine-tune to your preference the moment you cross the threshold. A screen on the wall in the foyer reads your email aloud as you hang your coat. Your kitchen has become your own private sous chef. 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 focaccia?" you suggest. The lights dim, and a recipe shines down from above on your black Corian countertop as the oven begins to preheat.
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. You can cue up a movie on a kitchen monitor while cooking and finish it on the plasma in the den - or the projection screen in the media room. A central media server supplies entertainment throughout, seamlessly streaming content wherever there is demand.
Sounds great, right? Microsoft is banking on it. 16100 NE 159th Avenue is also known as the Microsoft Home and is modeled on Bill Gates' own Seattle mansion. Powered by four PCs running Windows XP, it features dozens of networked monitors, Xboxes, appliances, and consumer electronics devices scattered everywhere. Life is good when you're the king of software.
There is, however, another model home on the Microsoft campus, one that offers a glimpse of a different life. It, too, has the fully outfitted living room, bedrooms, and study, but rather than custom equipment dreamed up for the geek who has everything, this faux ranch house is a showcase for products Microsoft is actually shipping as part of its eHome effort. Although the hardware is much the same - Windows XP boxes and fast networks - the result is not.
The main difference is that the notion of a media server is gone. Sure, the second showcase home has a powerful computer, called a Media Center Edition PC, which can record television like TiVo does. But it stands by itself on a desk, cut off from the rest of the house. Due to limits imposed by the operating system, there's no way to play its stored shows on another screen or TV. As a result, the would-be media server is a curiosity: too big and expensive to simply sit, TiVo-like, under a television, and too computer-like to offer much of a cinematic experience. In this house, sadly, it's every screen for itself.
These two homes represent two futures. The first is what consumers want: digital media their way, in whatever form suits. The second is what Hollywood wants: media lockdown, with every use subject to permission and often then only for a fee.
In the middle stands Microsoft, determined to navigate these extremes. In the face of a rapidly maturing business market, Microsoft needs to find a way to persuade consumers to upgrade their PCs.
The answer: films, music, and other digital media flowing from one Microsoft device to another. But Hollywood owns the content. The record labels have seen what can happen when consumers gain total control; the film studios aren't about to let file-sharing ruin them. And so Micr
Then you wake the FUCK up and realize consumers have little to no control.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Dear rotten.com, I am unsure if you are aware of the problems that your "Incident with the bird" picture has caused on the popular technology website slashdot (http://slashdot.org).
Many users of this site's messageboards are posting links to http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/ and making text based representations of a bird on a man's penis. Frankly, while I am pro-freedom, this type of photo sickens me. Could you please move the location of the bird page on your site to keep slashdot readers from seeing things that are completeley unrelated to computers and technology? I'm not asking you to remove the content, just to relocate it.
FYI the text representation of the bird is:
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
p______...___________________________p
e____(_..__`'-.,--,__________________e
n_____'-._'-.__`\a\\_________________n
i_________'.___.'_(|_________________i
s____________7____||_________________s
b___________/___.'_|_________________b
i__________/_.-'__,J_________________i
r_________/_________\________________r
d________||___/______;_______________d
*________||__|_______|_______________*
p________`\__\_______|__/__''\_______p
e__________'._\______/.-`____{}|_____e
n___________/\_`;_.-'_________/______n
i___________\_;(((____.--'\_/________i
s_________.(((_____.-;\______________s
b____.--'`_____,;`'.'-;\_____________b
i_taco's____.'____'._.'\\____________i
r_dick_--'_________|__\_|____________r
d__________________\_\,_/____________d
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
with a link to the offensive site (http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/) underneath, these "Penis Birds" are posted by Penis Bird Guy, Penis Bird MAN and several other users.
Regards, Andrew J. Tosh
... end for good old Steve "dance dance monkey boy" Ballmer.
Imagine Stevey plowing Bill from behind and saying:
"Bill, tell me linux is a cancer!!! I.....LOVE.....THIS....COMPANY!!!!!!!!"
I.....LOVE....THIS.....COMPANY!!!!!!!