unfaire

Will Microsoft Get Squeezed by Chrome OS?

If my memory is correct, in the mid 80's, while IBM was offering $200 OS2 for PC, Microsoft came out with Windws 3 for only $27 or so including Words, Excel, and PowerPoint. I got both of them but I immediately abandoned OS2 for Windows for the latter's easy of use as well as integration of various aspects of PC operation. At the time, OMB OS2 was the defacto standard for big corporations and corporate IT people were looking down at Windows as cheap toys.
Now 20 years later, Microsft is behaving like IBM then, and worse. I do appreciate the new Windows 7 and the all the wonderful features of Windows. But Microsoft is now behaving like (and as) monopoly with little regards for users. For example, we have files which go all the way back to Windows 3 and Microsoft has abandoned the backward compatibility for their own products. It is like you bought a car and after a while you cannot get its parts anymore. But, cars get junked but our files do not.
Windows also got very intransparent about interface with non-Windows software and hardware and that interface keeps some vendors like Adobe tied so tightly with Windows. Of course, with each upgrade of Windows, we have to do the expensive Photoshop upgrade and that keep both of them very happy.
But, we start to see the terrible effects of this intrasparent interface. Just ask someone with Windows Vista or Windows 7, they suffered so much Blue Screen Of Death as well as Screen Freeze. And, they are VERY slow in fixing them and the vendors like HP are hanging their customer high and dry.
I believe many people are hoping Google Chrome OS or anyone else will come to relief them from the high cost and unnecessarily complicated Windows monopoly.
Someday, someone will succeed in dethroning Microsoft, as Microsoft did to IBM, big corporate users notwithstanding, if Microsoft keeps going the way they do today.

Google Should Deliver Its YouTube Data to Viacom in Paper Form

When Chinese government asked Google, Yahoo, and other Internet companies for the lists of users who had accessed certain websites, that ended up in certain arrests, there was a huge hue and cry, even a congressional investigation. Now, a U.S. company is asking for the same and it may ended up making certain people (this time, a very large number of people) criminals, why there is no such hue and cry? Are American people valued less than Chinese, even by ourselves? Or, are American corporations mightier than Chinese government?

Viacom Rules, Google Drools? Not So Fast

I think Google/YouTube will be the dominant place where people will turn to. In effect, by pulling materials out from YouTube, Viacom is going to lose some exposure. I just wonder if Google people have thought about this. Most websites depend on Google to get readership. If some media companies want exposure by putting up their copyrighted materials to gain readership, aren't they using Google/YouTube as an advertising medium? If so, Google/YouTube should charge them for it instead of sharing revenue with them. I believe this will put the relationship between Google and Viacom on a completely different level.