Microsoft in your home
p2pnet.net News:- Will the Xbox game box dominate your home and will Zune do the same in your car?
That’s what Bill Gates has in mind.
He’s planning on having his two units rule in your living rooms and vehicles in the same that Microsoft Windows rules in most retail computers.
“With the souped-up Xbox, consumers will not only be able to play games and play DVDs, as the box already can do, but also use it to download and record television shows and other digital media, much like the popular TiVo digital video recorder,” says The San Francisco Chronicle, reportoing on Gates’ keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last night.
Such an event would in the process also ruin a number of small and large concerns who exist to service those industry created gaps. But thems the breaks.
It doesn’t end there, however. With his box in your living room, running everything you see and do you (with the entertainment cartels lurking darkly in his shadow) he wants to consolidate.
Enter the Fordcrosoft Auto DRM (DRiver Management) system through which On The Road would take on a whole new meaning..
Or as Guardian Unlimited puts it, “In a high profile deal with car manufacturer Ford, Microsoft hopes to revolutionize the way people interact with their vehicles.”
This would not, of course have anything to do with the way you interact with your car: quite the reverse, in fact. It would be yet another way for Bill and the Boyz to get into you and your wallet, even while you’re driving.
“Microsoft also reiterated its commitment to competing with Apple’s iPod music player, saying it expects to sell 1 million of its Zune portable digital media players by the middle of the year,” says The San Francisco Chronicle, adding, “As a further enticement, Microsoft said that by this fall the Zune will be able to automatically synchronize with a dozen 2008 Ford cars.”
“Mr Gates said the plans were all part of the company’s vision of connecting up different aspects of modern life,” says Guardian Unlimited.
“Just as computer technology has become integral to the business, it would exert the same influence over music, movies and transport, he said.
“Over time you will have the same kind of entertainment in your car. It’s a real milestone.”
Indeed. But for Microsoft, not for you.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
The San Francisco Chronicle – At CES, Gates focuses on digital entertainment, January 8, 2007
DRiver Management – The Microsoft, Ford, auto, January 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited – Microsoft unveils Sync in-car computer system, January 8, 2007
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January 9th, 2007 at 4:48 am
At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated “if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors made the following contribution to the debate:
“If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the car windows, shut it off, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you’d have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you’d accept this too.
Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bout a “Car 95″ or a “Car NT”. But then you’d have to buy more seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive – but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single “General Car Fault” warning light.
People would get excited about the “new” features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.
We’d all have to switch to Microsoft petrol and lubricants but the packaging would be superb.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size arse.
The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
They wouldn’t build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 1 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.
There would be an “Engium Pro” with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.
Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes.Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.
Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don’t own anyroads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free,including IBM.
If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11),then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive muchfaster, and on more roads!
If you couldn’t afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrowyour friends, and then copy it.
Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganize the ignitionfor a few days before it worked.
You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.
Every time Microsoft introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
Microsoft would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Automobile Association Road maps (now a Microsoft subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more.
You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.