This week, CBS has arranged for special showings of an episode of the original Star Trek at movie theaters in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia to try to convince people to buy the new DVD sets with the remastered version of the original Star Trek TV series. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s HD Photo format is now a standard, and the OOXML format in Office 2007 may become one too.
Ok, so as detailed on startrek.com, CBS has scheduled a special showing on the ST:TOS episode “Menagerie” in select movie theaters in the U.S. on Nov. 13, 2007 at 7:30 PM, Nov. 15, 2007 at 7:30 PM, and Nov. 15, 2007 at 10:30 PM. With high definition and a special introduction by Gene Roddenberry’s son and some behind-the-scenes stuff. There’s apparently also going to be showings in Canada, Europe, and Australia.
I got my ticket almost three weeks ago. I’ll be at a showing tomorrow night. I haven’t seen an episode of the original series in a long time. Maybe this will convince me to get the DVD set?
Meanwhile recent news seem to indicate that Microsoft is about to become a defacto standards organization. The stuff it creates tend to become standards. Recently the Joint Photographers Expert Group voted to accept Microsoft’s HD Photo image format as a new standard called JPEG XR, according to news.com. And now, people are speculating on zdnet.com that Microsoft’s Office Open XML format might become a standard in an ISO vote in February 2008 because the people behind the OpenDocument Format are backing away from it.
What do you think? Should we let Microsoft dictate the file formats used by the computer software applications that we use? I know I used to hear people say Microsoft can’t innovate and Microsoft just buys stuff from others or buy the company behind innovative products, but this would seem to show that Microsoft can innovate and Microsoft can create things that people want.
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