From the "Great Minds Think Alike" Department

This was too bizarre and funny.  I've periodically mentioned my friend Ed Bott who is a techno whiz who writes a great (and very readable) column for ZDNet, as well as around 20+ books in conjunction with Microsoft.  It's rare that we overlap too much when it comes to tech matters, though in this case it was kismet.  (It helps, too, that although the overall matter was indeed tech, the specific area where we overlapped wasn't.)  What the story also shows is what I mean that as techno-whiz as he is, Ed is one of those tech guys who actually has other human interests, and that's in part what makes him very readable.

A couple days ago, he had a column here about Microsoft ending its Windows Media Center software.  I sent him a note that I quite enjoyed the article, but not so much for all the details (which were fine and interesting) but mainly for his hilarious bluntness of it.  It was like he didn’t want to give readers even a scintilla of wiggle room to mistake the point and wonder if Windows Media Center might, possibly, just maaaybe be a-coming back.  What I then wrote was, "In some ways, though I'm sure it wasn’t intended this way precisely, your article was really funny and read like a techie version of the Monty Python Parrot Sketch.  'WMC has ceased to be.  It is dead.  Deceased.  It is an ex-Media Center.  It ain’t pining, it is dead.  It is no more.'”

Ed quickly wrote me back to say that the original version of his article began differently than the final, edited version.  In the first draft, he began it something like -- "Windows Media Center is no more. It is pushing up daisies. It has joined the Choir Invisible. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-platform.”