And the Winner Is....

<drum roll> Mr Robert Scoble or making the most idiotic statement of the year! His "letter to Bill Gates" (his employer) on how to make a cool music player (with which to crush the iPod), included this statement.

Open source has become a metaphor for things done in public view with public input. Actually, you're a leader here.

Few phrases highlight how little clue Robert (who I respect, he's a nice guy, and a smart guy) has about Open Source. He's been making a lot of them lately, mostly to (I'm guessing) rile people up so he can laugh at the silly open source weirdos getting all bent out of shape. The bonus is that we get to see a bit how Microsoft, or at least a MicroSoftie thinks. From the one entry alone I can conclude:

• Microsoft must win and cannot accept second place to anyone on anything.
• Open source means telling people what you are doing.
• Microsoft has a big push for people to create blogs.
• ...Blogs that talk about stuff they are doing (for example, the IE Blog, which doesn't do much more than talk about how yet another security update came out or how they love windows or blah blah useless crap blah).
• therefor, Microsoft is a leader in open source, Q.E.D.!
• Continuing to repeat things like "microsoft is a leader in open source" and "if you don't have a blog you're irrelevant" until they are true (like the republicans do!)

Maybe Robert gets hired by various different development groups inside Microsoft to try to create interest or momentum with the flavor of the month. Last month it was Halo 2, this month the "how can we crush the iPod", who knows what's next? Personally as I posted in his comments (which for some reason are really wide for this post), instead of posting crap like that, ask the readers the simple question of "how do we make our media player better/more cool. Personally I think that Microsoft has put way to much effort into proving to people they are a business company and not "cool" or "hip" by any degree, but all business, yessiree, to turn any faction of themselves (with the exception of the xBox group, who are really a completely separate product paradigm from the rest of the company) into as exciting a product as the iPod. Actually this post is about on the level (intelligence wise) with the next one commenting on someone advocating switching to a linux desktop. He does the standard Microsoft response of "does outlook/office/$random_windows_only_software run under linux?" Funnily enough, most of the software he quotes does through various hardworking groups donating their time and expertise (IE: the Wine group, Code Weavers, etc. Ironically, Halo 2 won't run (strictly) on Windows, only xBox.