Open government helped by Microsoft?

Ain’t the Internet great? I’m home, so I can tune into the Democratic National Convention. Or specifically, grabbing the video stream of what is happening on the floor. This way I can listen to what is being said (I’ve never really paid attention in the last eight years) while I’m working on finding a job. No need to turn on the TV, all of my information flows through the computer.

I was a bit worried at first that the DNC website requires Microsoft’s Silverlight. eh? I’m a Mac guy. But I saw there is actually an OS X plug-in. Hey, that’s cool. It works under Safari too. There are stutters from time to time, mainly because of all the stuff I’ve got running on the CPU concurrently. The codec being used is pretty good at keeping the video crisp while my DSL line maxes out at 1.6Mb/sec.

So I give credit where it is due. MS built a no-pain video streaming sub-system. For Macs. What is the world coming to? :)

(As an aside, how many people chose their delegate that went to the DNC or the RNC? I did. Met the local superdelegate too. Please Vote in November)

-Mike M.