When Microsoft unveiled their um…iPod killer a while back, I really thought that was the ultimate shark-jump. Apparently, though, they really enjoy enormous wasted duplications of effort. That’s why they came up with Silverlight. For those of you who don’t know, Silverlight is Microsoft’s new “Flash Killer”. You can go ahead and laugh now. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

No, seriously. Microsoft, seeing that there was something they didn’t completely dominate, thought it would be a good idea to reinvent Flash. You see, in Microsoft Fantasy Land^TM Silverlight is replaces the Flash player and everyone develops content on a combination of Visual Studio and something called Expression. The player is “cross platform”, meaning that it runs on PCs and Macs. They don’t have a version for Linux (like Flash does), but hey. Who needs those guys? Of course, you can’t develop content for it on a Mac. The development tools are Windows only. That will surely have the Flash developers jumping ship in no time!

(Editor’s Note: Several people have brought Moonlight to my attention. I don’t really think it counts, at least not yet. Even they admit it’s a work in progress. It’s also developed and maintained by people outside of Microsoft, virtually guaranteeing compatibility problems.)

Considering their track record of Not Invented Here Syndrome, it’s hardly surprising they’d try something like this. What baffles me is that it doesn’t make any business sense. I mean, they’re giving away the player, so there’s no money there. They’re charging for the development tools, which are utterly non-compelling. Throw in the fact that for a content developer, there’s utterly no guarantee that web clients are going to have Silverlight installed, and I can’t really see the business proposition.

You know what would have been great? If Microsoft made something that say, easily integrates .NET and Flash. I mean, the SWF file format is well-known. The license terms permit other tools to create SWF files. Instead of wasting time and money creating a competing standard, why not embrace the standard that 98% of web clients already use to enhance the utility of your own products? Everyone would win, including you, Microsoft!

The funniest part of this whole sordid affair is that Microsoft doesn’t even use this pig. While it’s rumored that they’ll be moving the entirety of Microsoft.com to a Silverlight-based interface, none of their other important sites use it. I see you, back there, waving your hand in the air and mouthing the word “PopFly“. Shut up. That doesn’t count and you know it.

Sometimes, on MySpace, people comment on my pictures. They say funny things or ask questions. I would like to sass back or perhaps answer said questions. When I try to do this, I get an ugly red error message that reads, “You must be someone’s friend to make comments about them.”

Well, I think I’m pretty okay, so I thought maybe I’d add myself as my own friend so I could make comments on my own images. It was at this time that I recieved the most awesome error message I’ve received from any computer, ever. It’s pictured on the right there.

That’s right folks, you cannot add yourself as a friend. So if you’re your only friend, GUESS WHAT BUDDY? YOU’RE NOT, OKAY!?!?!?

I think I can hear the emo kids crying from here.