Sigh, yesterday was one of those days on which Microsoft tells the world it wants to open up. Steve Ballmer announced a new initiative to open up Microsoft products for better interoperability with competing products and technologies. This is hard to believe because the traditional business model of Microsoft has been “vendor lock-in”. Encrypting your data in a proprietary format without telling you how to access that is not helping clients but holding their data for ransom (licenses). Will Microsoft really change it ways now?…

Update: okay, we’re all on the same page again. Read the analysis at groklaw.

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It was a long and hard struggle in the new high-definition digital versatile disc arena. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were fighting for adoption. Now the fight has ended, the dust settles and Blu-Ray comes out as the winner. Toshiba is going to give up on its HD-DVD format. Now that the battle is over the consumers can finally buy a product without having to worry about buying the wrong format. You can expect prices to drop as well in the near future.

How is this going to influence the console market? Sony’s playstation 3 comes with a built-in Blu-Ray device. Microsofts XBOX 360 comes without any HD player but an optional HD-DVD is available. Since Sony’s Playstation 3 is the cheapest Blu-Ray player available will the market shift towards PS3 instead of XBOX 360? Many people already bought a Playstation 3 and only use it as a Blu-Ray player. Let’s wait and see… this could get interesting. Will the bad choice for HD-DVD force Microsoft to drop the price on their console?

Last week the news hit the streets: SP1 for Microsofts Vista operating system was finally done. Availability will be early march this year. PC World managed to get its hands on it and started a preliminary test. Since I’m not a user of inferior technology I don’t know about the quirks of Vista but the article at PC World mentions that file copying is extremely slow on Vista. After SP1 the file copy performance is increased with 9%. Other features are still slow or are even more slow after installing SP1. So an improvement in one area is mutual exclusive with another improvement. I guess that explains all the different versions of Vista. Microsoft should increase the product range with optimized version for the specific target group of users.

• Windows Vista - File Copy Edition, you copy files a lot? This is your version
• Windows Vista - Boot Edition, you regularly start your computer? This is your version.
• Windows Vista - Mail Edition, you read and send mail a lot? This is your version.
• Windows Vista - Internet Edition, you browse the internet? This is your version.
• Windows Vista - Word Edition, you process text files? This is your version.

………

• Windows Vista - Premium, want to do it all?! At the same time?! Use GNU/Linux, BSD or buy a Mac.

Ha ha ha, wat ben ik toch een sukkel. Ik dacht serieus dat de overheid, geheel tegen de verwachting en gewoonte in, eindelijk eens een goede keuze had gemaakt. Weet u het nog? Ik had het artikeltje nog wel in het Engels gekrabbeld uit trots: Dutch governement goes open standards. De overheid zou open standaarden gaan gebruiken in de toekomst. Ha ha ha, wat ben ik toch een dom, naïef mannetje. Zie maar eens waar webwereld de hand op heeft weten te leggen.

U bent vrij om mij te beschimpen of anderszins kapot te maken in de comments vanwege mijn vertrouwen in de overheid. Ik heb het verdiend. Stenig mij!

Update: er is echter wel een balletje aan het rollen gebracht. De regering gaat in de verdediging. In een brief n.a.v. kamervragen laat Bos weten dat het slechts een tussenstap is. Het project, met de toepasselijke naam GOUD, die reeds in gang gezet zou zijn, wordt in 2012 vervangen door een andere werkplek omgeving met open standaarden en open source. De SP en de PVV hebben een spoeddebat afgedwongen dat komende week plaats moet vinden. Micro$choft gaat schofterig veel “GOUD” aan ons verdienen.