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MS Plans To Cooperate With Chinese TV Maker
zhangyong writes "Microsoft has signed a strategic cooperation pact with China's top television maker Sichuan Changhong Electric Appliances (which claims to be the world's number-two maker of colour TVs, OEM for APEX, etc.), the official Shanghai Securities News (in Chinese) (in English) said on Monday.
'Changhong would receive advanced IT technology and software from Microsoft to develop digital TV sets and other high-technology products.'
What will happen when low-cost labor in China is combined with Microsoft technologies?"
TV networks are about the easiest thing there is to government-control; it's both more efficient and more reliable to control the broadcaster. The Chinese gov't has also displayed a dismaying abundance of good sense when censoring their citizens' internet access: They filter the transmissions at well-chosen choke points, which is (again) efficient and reliable. The MS/RIAA route of controlling the individual computers/TVs is inefficient and unreliable, and it seems like they know it. I doubt they're interested in DRM-enabled TVs.
Nonsense. I have both an Apex TV and a DVD player. Both are quite high quality. The TV has an excellent picture. The DVD player can play MP3, SVCD, VCD, straight MPEG, just about anything. Chinese products are not universally shitty.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I think you are right in that IBM was the one which handed the monopoly to Microsoft. But, it was Bill and Steve who decided to use anti-competitive practices as the basis for doing business instead of competing by producing better products. MBA's love those guys but techies, mostly dispise them. Gershner once said that Microsoft was a great marketing company and a poor technology company and that REALLY REALLY pissed Bill Gates off. Because he THINKS he's a good geek. And he pays the people around him to make sure he keeps thinking that way. :/
Anyway, so once the monopoly was established, Microsoft started pounding on anybody who didn't play THIER game and they did this with the OEMs and ISVs. Like the thread parent said, Microsoft want after the suppliers of the product and took the choice from the consumers since they held a bigger hammer over the heads of the suppliers.
You were both right, just off on the time of the events.
BTW, Bill Gates' paranoia has made him VERY wealthy, but only because he was handed the monopoly power by IBM( as you stated ). This does not make him a visionary or a genius in my book. Far smarter people built far better and useful tools then has ever come from Microsoft. But they were destroyed by Bill and Steves fear of being shown up. Gawd, just look at their "Facts" tour to see what bull they excrete and look at the state of Microsofts 3 year old Secure Computing Initiative. But that just IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I got back from China a few months ago. There are American DVDs everywhere. There was a van going around with 'Intellectual Property Enforcement' written on it... in English only... quite obviously for display purposes. China is probably the biggest pirate nation in the world, maybe second to Russia, maybe not. Combine industrial capacity with a total disregard for property laws.
I would not be surprised if this is a step by Microsoft to get some Chinese folks with clout ("guanxi" in Chinese or "connections" in English is even more important in China than in the U.S.) That's the only way for MS to protect its IP in China and head off a prospective haven of bootlegged media and DRM flaunting software.
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