Sometimes interests just align.
9 Sept 05

Another quick update tonight. I have to keep my streak going. I'll try to get back to the deep, intellectual columns next week. Yeah, right. It's hard to have deep thoughts when you have to do spot checks on yourself to see if you have too much baby drool on you to go out in public. Still, wouldn't trade it for the world.

I don't know which is worse, Microsoft admitting they killed PC gaming by reducing emphasis as a publisher and encouraging developers to move to consoles or their decision to revive PC gaming as a selling point to push customers to Window's Vista. I guess I'm thankful. Maybe they'll put in some nice features for gamers into vista and pay for development of some great games to demonstrate them. It seems like they could have done this after the Xbox was established. Then it wouldn't look so crass.

Here, to prove I'm not too bitter, I'll give Microsoft some good, free advice on Vista. Here's a feature I'd like to see, global age awareness. What? I said global age awareness. This is not some cult thing. It's a parenting thing. Look, you've got programs like net nanny and proposals like .kids. Rather than have parents have to set up all these tools to protect kids, have it at the OS level.

When a parent creates a new account, the OS asks if it's a child, and if so, what's their age? Then things like browsers, media players and games can do a simple OS level age check. If the user is too young, access is denied. Once it's a standard feature, companies will be scrambling to implement checks on everything. It will save parents a lot of headaches, and help Microsoft sell lots of copies of Vista.

If that's too complex, here's something easier for Microsoft. Publish Darwinia in the US. It will show you're not mindless, market research driven, corporate suits.

That's about all I can do for Microsoft. Have a great weekend. Don't forget about our contest.

Jason