It was brought to our attention that on March 21 Microsoft announced their withdrawal from the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C examines how to best standardize how the web works, and how best to make sure that Internet contact points cooperate in the future. While Microsoft was only participating since March 13th, it’s interesting to note that Microsoft decided to discontinue participation after discovering that its research into contract language (the language of establishing communication between endpoint on the web) didn’t mesh with the W3C’s efforts. You can read more about in the InfoWorld article.
In a follow-up the Enquirer puts a rather negative spin on the whole issue in Microsoft DirectX killing innovation in which they.. umm…well… “whine” is a good term I guess, about the Microsoft domination of the direction of 3D graphics features (true) and about the homogenization of the 3D graphics card market (also true, but it’s generally a good thing), and about how homogenization will take away all innovation (Just look at NVIDIA’s NVRotate and NVKeystone). I don’t think standardizing on a programmable API is at all bad – programmers will take this to the next level. The trend has been towards higher and higher levels of API’s. Nobody really wants to program at the register level anymore.