By James Turner
Senior Editor
Well, not a heck of a lot to report on the Linux front for day
one of the Consumer Electronics Show (really day zero, because the
show floor doesn’t open up until tomorrow morning.) The evening
highlight, as it were, was the annual “Look How Great Microsoft Is”
keynote by Bill Gates. I’ll apologize in advance for the quality of
the photos, they ran out of assigned press seating and a lot of us
were seated up in nosebleed territory.
Bill Gates Demanding One Million Dollars…
The first part of the talk was a Disney-style World of Tommorrow
fantasy of the next five years, where computers are your friends
and information seamlessly follows you everywhere and you can turn
your cell phone into a desktop computer by placing it down on a
table. About all it seemed to demonstrate was that Microsoft can
produce a snazzy demo with no real technology behind it, although
some of the concepts were intriguing.
So the future is going to be a rigged demo.
After that, things settled down into a long Vista demo, in which
it was demonstrated that you’ll be able to use tabbed browsing in
IE (just like Firefox), that you’ll be able to set ESRB ratings
levels under parental controls so only certain games will be
permitted for your kids, that you’ll be able to sort, crop, remove
redeye and otherwise organize your photos (just like iPhoto,
Easyshare, or 99 other photo packages)… you get the idea. Vista
seems to be essentially “let’s take all the good ideas everyone
else has come up with and bundle them into the OS”. Nothing wrong
with that, but notably missing from the discussion was any mention
of improved security or virus protection.
Microsoft’s motives may not be transparent, but at least
Vista’s Windows are.
To their credit, we then got a sneak peak at the next generation
of Flight Simulator, which definitely kicked butt graphics-wise. It
was noticably sluggish however, which begs the question what the
minimum systems requirements will be to get it to run well.
Ok, so Flight Simulator looks awesome.
Next followed an announcement that MTV has partnered with
Microsoft to create a music service called URGE, which from all
appearances is a iTune/Rhapsody/Napster clone. To bolster their
credibility, they brought out Justin Timberlake to say how snazy it
is. I don’t keep up with pop music trends, but my impression was
that Timberlake was pretty much over his 15 minutes of fame. I
guess Bono’s deal with Apple would keep him from endorsing
URGE.
Justin Timberlake endorses Urge, World yawns.
At this point, I’m going to summarize. A lot of what was talked
about was how A) You could share your information about what TV
shows you watch and what music you listen to with your friends (and
Microsoft), and you’d get all sorts of neat benefits in return, and
B) You’ll be able to buy all sorts of neat content from Microsoft
and it’s partners, and it would all be nice and legal. A lot was
made of how you’ll be able to use a cable card with Windows Media
Center to record high def premium and HDTV cable content, unspoken
was the “if our DRM decides you should be allowed to” piece of the
pie.
After the Gates talk, I headed over to the Tech Zone party,
which was short on products to view but had a nice buzz. The one
product they did have on display was an LCD display that features
enhanced dynamic range. Unfortunately, what the display was best at
demoing was why you should always ship your critical equipment
very, very carefully.
The Brightside LCD Display was everything it was cracked up
to be.
I finished the evening over at a party for Fatal1ty, the
professional video gamer. Again, not much to see, but some nice
folks, good food, and a killer view of the city from the Foundation
Room over at the Mandalay Bay.
Vegas by night.
Tommorow, the show floor opens. I should have lots of juicy
Linux news to report, and some more photos of the nightlife at
CES.