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As I write this I'm watching Notre Dame and Michigan bite the dust.
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The game between the two this passed Saturday was so terrible I turned it off after 10 minutes to watch the TN-FL game.
After learning how much it costs to simply RENT THE VENUE FOR A SINGLE REGIONAL for the 3 days per regional we need, I applaud Microsoft for their efforts in sponsoring engineering education. The aforementioned financial dollar amount is well into 6 figures if I have my numbers correct.
The fact that there are several currently-unaddressed bugs that irritate the crap outta me on my new laptop that has Vista will undoubtedly make me cautious when approaching the subject of whether or not their influence into our FRC controllers is a good thing. If Microsoft prys and prys and attempts to get a long-standing implementation of their robotics platform as the official FRC controller, I seriously doubt I can continue believing that FIRST isn't full of themselves in their beliefs. This in no way affects my thanks to Microsoft in supporting the Seattle Regional.
So blatently narrowing down the field to one specific platform has both hurt and helped FIRST teams in their rookie and onward seasons. Simplicity vs. Limitations is a huge balance between the variety of experience of teams out there. Becoming limited to a single-platform controller would be the first mistake FIRST makes if they go with Microsoft for the controller -- the one good thing that Microsoft is extremely good at is ensuring that you only have the open doors that you're "allowed" to go through. Attempting it any other way seems to be nearly impossible without spending a ridiculous amount of time on it or you perchance can find another hack into IE browser "robot edition"
I that said, I don't want Microsoft as the new platform on the controller -- not because of their history of whatever you can find, but because of their history of the Microsoft-everything dependency.