I tuned into Gameday today to keep up with the stats on Boston's exciting win over the Reds (Yoooouk!), and noticed something odd... the 'new' Gameday for 2008 seems to have gone back to the classic look and technology stack. This is good for several reasons: 1. the Flash-based interface was (and is again) excellent and; 2. it looks like Gameday quietly dumped Silverlight.

Hrm. I wonder what the back story is here.

Supposedly, MS offered MLB a bunch of moola to switch to Silverlight, which they really had to do because Flash has a well-deserved strangle-hold on web multimedia. Go figure.. something that works, very well, on all platforms. Yeah, that must drive MS nuts - a standard that they don't control.. and Adobe is just too big for MS to swallow.

Anyway, for fun, I uninstalled Silverlight (having had it forced on me earlier in the season) and took a tour of the MLB site. Even though the system FAQ still states the Silverlight is needed, at no point during my browsing was I forced to install it. Even the 'Premium video' demo clearly indicates that it's using Flash..

I have to wonder if whatever original "considerations" MLB was given to adopt Silverlight are now being added to in order to avoid an embarrassing disclosure that it didn't work out after all.

There's some open speculation on whether Steve Ballmer should be sent packing from Microsoft. I couldn't agree more with the sentiments. What with choosing NOT to listen to their customers on XP end-of-life, overpricing the heck out of a crippled O/S, re-doing the interface on their flagship product (Office) and not allowing people to stick with the familiar U/I, and most recently screwing up royally on the Yahoo deal, I'm surprised he's survived this long.

I hope Ozzie takes over - he's a tech guy, at least.

Hrm... has Microsoft done ANYTHING worthwhile besides provide laughing stock material since Ballmer took over? Google is very good, but their image is certainly elevated in comparison to M$.

*edit: a friend of mine described Microsoft's actions over the last few years as a "Failure Spree". I like it - thanks, Brian!