Microsoft Says Goodbye To WebTV/MSN TV

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has just notified both subscribers of MSN TV that the service would be ending at the end of September (FAQ for subscribers here). The service, which delivered Internet access to a TV screen via a set top box, was the evolution of WebTV Networks launched by Steve Perlman and others during the initial Web boom in the mid '90s. Microsoft bought the company for $503 million in 1997, when Bill Gates was still CEO."

Comments

Remembering Phil Goldman, WebTV cofounder

[Paul Fernhout]

The guy across the hall from me my first year at Princeton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Goldman
"Phillip York "Phil" Goldman (July 17, 1964 -- December 26, 2003) was an American engineer and entrepreneur best known for co-founding WebTV. ... Growing up in San Mateo, California, Goldman attended San Mateo High School graduating in 1982.[1] He graduated first in his engineering class, Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University in 1986 [1], in a class that also included Jeff Bezos and David Hitz, founder of NetApp. He served as chair of Princeton's Computer Science Advisory Council, and in 1998, Goldman donated $2 million to his alma mater to endow a chair, becoming the youngest alumnus ever to do so. Goldman would go on to hold 19 patents, and had 30 more pending at the time of his death. ... Goldman also served as a director of BraveKids, a charity that uses the internet to provide information and support for families of children with serious illnesses. Goldman died of heart failure on December 25, 2003 age 39 at his home in Los Altos Hills, California. He is survived by wife Susan Rayl and their two children, Sydney and Josephine.[4]"

A nice guy and such a loss to his family. I talk about Phil some in the context of Princeton and his extreme "fat free" diet here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
An excerpt: "Phil starts out aspiring, otherwise he would not have gone to someplace like Princeton, when California had a great public college system at the time like at Berkeley. Phil is surrounded by other aspiring people like myself at PU, but in a twisted context that prizes individual achievement and competition, and does not emphasize cooperation or balance. Princeton in that sense is an Ivy League ant hill. Phil and I are formed by Princeton University into (as Mr. Furious of the Mystery Men suggested) "little automaton droids"; essentially from our years at PU, we pupate from human beings into ants who go off programmed by PU to find and bring back money to the colony. Phil succeeds at bringing back a lot of money to PU, and I don't, but PU is playing the odds, it knows everyone won't bring back lots of money. Phil dies shortly after endowing a chair in Computer Science as the youngest alumni to ever do so (he was an amazing guy). PU doesn't really care about Phil's death (or whatever becomes of someone like me if I were to die trying to bring money back to PU) because there are always more ants. What does any ant colony care about the loss of one ant or even many in the pursuit of more resources for itself? So, in that sense, PU set up both both Phil and me to die in pursuit of profit for itself. ... Phil was interested in his health, but with a competetive Princeton background, perhaps he did not have the time to explore all the issues to make much of that aspiration, or the social encouragement towards moderation in all things (even moderation) or towards making health and health related research more of a priority? And with so much competition in our society over selling products or for research grants, it is hard to sort out fact from distortion even when you try to be as healthy as you can. I too fell for a while for the oversimplistic meme "fat makes you fat", where the results of such a diet for most people is to get fat, since carbohydrates can make you fat, too, with related ill-health effects, especially if you miss other essential nutrients from your diet (or from sunlight). So, there are a whole web of issues here, both individual and societal, even if vitamin D deficiency and competetion might be very big ones."

It's impressive WebTV lasted so long in an age of such rapidly changing technology. Still does not bring back Phil though.

More on healthy fats:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article11.aspx