Microsoft gets a 'Blue Screen of Death' medal in Beijing
(Credit:
Rivercool)
You win some, you lose some. Microsoft is getting its brand on the Beijing Olympics in more ways than one, in one case to very poor effect.
Reports from China suggest that Microsoft's Silverlight is delivering exceptional streaming video for NBC's Olympic coverage.
Unfortunately, Microsoft also had the shame of the Blue Screen of Death afflict the opening ceremonies, with the BSoD up on the big screen for more than two hours during the ceremony. Li Ning, who lit the main Olympic torch, actually walked in front of the BSoD, immortalizing the image of Microsoft XP failing on the Beijing Olympics.
Yes, XP. The Olympics decided to use XP instead of Vista because it's more stable. Yes, really. :-)
The most ironic thing in this is that I'm sure Microsoft lobbied hard to give the Beijing Olympic Committee free use of Windows, just as it did with SharePoint for the World Economic Forum. (Bill Gates can be very persuasive.) Some "deals" really are too good to be true.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
but as soon as one Linux can run everything Windows can, i'm moving
i've already changed IE for Firefox and MS Office for OpenOffice.org, so Windows to Linux might be my next upgrade, as long as i can do everything i did on XP(i'm also not using Vista)
Even some consumer sites (like Casio's G-Shock site), which runs a full-flash interface, loses menu functionality if you're not running Windows. You watch TV and your kids see a commercial for a fun site from their favorite breakfast cereal - I'm going to betchya that site is gonna expect you to be running Windows (and IE7) and nothing else will do.
And Ubuntu has its share of hang-ups and slow-downs too - Linux is not perfect! I remember more than once having to power down the laptop to get past a total system lockup under Ubuntu. For me, Windows appears more polished and professional and gets me access to the software and the web sites I need.
- by cjay554 September 30, 2008 8:12 AM PDT
- even tho its bad drivers, its still windows' fault for either not supporting it, or having a precaution against this fault. I've used linux with the worst hardware compatible devices, some don't even work, but are recognized in as different devices, yet my whole computer doesn't crash because of it. Generic drivers do the trick to fix any compatibility errors either way. That which microsofts generic drivers usually cause the problem.
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