Adding to its long list of failed Internet ventures, Microsoft is shutting down its MSN TV Internet service on September 30, 2013. Those with long memories will remember that MSN TV had its origins in the Web TV venture founded by Steve Perlman et al. Founded in 1995, Web TV allowed the not-so-web savvy and […]
Life’s hard for Microsoft in the tablet and mobile phone arena. Nobody, nobody gives a damn for Microsoft’s Surface tablets or its mobile phones. Consumers don’t love them. Developers are indifferent to them (Microsoft is reduced to bribing developers to build apps). The fault is entirely Microsoft’s since it came too late to the tablet […]
Indian movie-makers are turning me off the medium of films with their insane Idée fixe on love. Hindi, Tamil or Telugu, most Indian movies have this unyielding, tiresome obsession with love. I’m sick and tired of watching yet another love story. So I was delighted to stumble upon The Lives of Others (2006), a remarkable […]
Get over it! Not withstanding the anger of millions of Americans over large-scale government spying, there will not be any change. Not one whit. Because the beneficiaries from the spying operations will not allow change. Helpless Americans America’s intelligence operations have been outsourced to private entities like Booz Allen and several hundred other companies. Whether […]
Envy is a dangerous sin, one of the seven deadly sins in the Christian theology. But no one seems to have told Microsoft and Google about the pitfalls of envy. In a span of less than a week, spurred by Apple store envy the two tech giants have laid the groundwork for retail disasters that […]
Most films I watch these days leave me deeply dissatisfied and often angry because there is little new to titillate hardened, cynical viewers like yours truly who think, rightly or wrongly, they’ve seen it all. But the 2008 Japanese film Departures provided a pleasant jolt to my jaded senses and amply made up for the […]