from the shooting-fish-at-the-beta-software-barrel dept. the reviews are in for three degrees and they're much more fun to read than actually going through the process of installing the software, which is a mute point for me since i the only copy of xp i own came with virtual pc which is on my ibook in some kind of apple repair alternate universe. but i digress.

i strongly suspect that microsoft is on to something with three degrees , but that doesn't mean it's not fun to harangue them as they give us a glimpse of the lengths to which microsoft would like to fiddle with everyone's computer:

"It's part of a worrying trend MS have been displaying recently that I'll call (for want of something wittier) feature-creep-away. Version 7.0 of Windows Media Player (a.k.a The Huge Blue Useless One) removed the ability to install .mov support. Now the latest version has removed streaming MP3 and AVI support (i.e. play during download). The lockdown has started. It's more than just "Trusted Computing"; they're trying to be Apple '90."

say what you want, i give them credit for putting up message boards for all the world to fawn over the ugly warts of an early release, although it looks like they might need to work on polishing their support skills in the coming weeks:

"Re: Messed up my internet
Posted: 24 Feb 2003 07:51 PM
this is so gay. my computer's network settings are completely screwed up. thank you three degrees team. i can't blame microsoft completely on this one. i'd have thought a group of young bright kids from princeton, harvard, etc could atleast respond to my messages or email. im hoping to hear something from them before the morning, hopefully something that could undo everything. "