Waaaagh!

The Olympics has begun.
If you missed that opening ceremony - well - you're a tard. Freaking spectacular. The NBC coverage blew goats - with all the idiot explaination crap, but then, Americans are morons and they need a pablumified version.
It's midnight - and i've got the NBC Olympics site up in Firefox - but no matter what i do the feed dies within a minute and fails to rebuffer... i dont know what kind of morons they hire at NBC to set these things up (oh yeah... they're americans...) but someone should be fired. It's absolute shit. How is it that a company can blow 3.5 billion dollars securing the rights to this event - push the online aspect hard in their tv coverage - fill the page up with GE ads that ironically talk up GE's 'cool technology' - and then fail so miserably in the execution. I'd click to reengage the feed - but every 4 or 5 times i do that the thing insists on showing me yet another crappy ad telling me how great GE is (it's day one and it's already annoying).

Funny - the ad never fails to buffer... I hope they fix this - because honestly it's the best way to watch the olympics. No announcers... no commentary... no human interest stories... just sailboats or fencers or cyclists racing through beijing with the soft whupping blades of the chase copter. The visionaries at NBC get it - but guys, when you're buying streaming video software you dont deploy a BETA software from Microsoft for your Olympics... this silverlight shit stinks worse than a Baghdad morgue in August. And I ask - when did microsoft ship a product that worked as a RELEASE CANDIDATE, much less a freaking beta. You want to stream video - call the porn industry. QED.

EDIT - use IE instead of Firefox... in IE you have the option to use flash video instead and it works. That's for those of us who're at home watching... for those in Beijing for the events I'm sure they're all enjoying themselves immensely.