Don't Forget What the MS in MSNBC Stands For...The Jerks!

Some friends of mine didn't get to watch the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics and wanted to see them on Sunday after a church event. We had recorded it but my house is small and with my eight-month-old granddaughter in temporary residence, space is at a premium. So I figured I'd just hook up my laptop to the church projection system and bring up the replay on nbcolympics.com. Should be fine, right?

Wrong.

Two problems.

First, as far as I can tell from one of the worst-organized sites I've ever seen, there is no replay of the entire ceremony. There are highlights, interviews, stories about the opening but not the entire ceremony. Stupid.

Second -- and my main complaint today -- when I did try to watch some video from that site on my OS X box, I was required to download Microsoft's Silverlight media plug-in before I could do so. Never mind that both Flash and QuickTime (not to mention Windows Media Player) are already widely installed. Microsoft (the "MS" in"MSNBC") is in a position to force consumers to use their inferior technology because of their involvement with the network.

NBC's entitled to its copyright protection which prevented the Olympics opening ceremony from being showed elsewhere but if they don't make the content available on their site without a penalty, that ought to forfeit that right.