So the Free Software Foundation has launched badvista.org, ostensibly a clearinghouse for informing computer consumers just how harmful Microsoft’s impending Windows Vista is for their digital and online health. To be honest, I haven’t really examined the literature too thoroughly, mostly because I just don’t personally care about Vista (“Yadda yadda, Microsoft bad, proprietary software implicitly wrong and evil, ad nauseum”). Though it did finally get me to thinking about the multimedia-related implications of the new OS upgrade. Per my reading, there will be no new actual multimedia container formats, video codecs, or audio codecs. But there are supposed to be layers upon layers of new DRM and associated rules encapsulating the existing formats and determining where/when/how a user can consume a particular piece of media.

Strange, but with my experiences using Linux over the last year, and particularly in the last week, I could set up a similar site about various shortcomings of Linux (as if that hasn’t been done to death already). But I notice that badlinux.org does not appear to be taken as of this writing.