Richard's Online Journal
Windows 7
It’s Windows 7 Launch Day, and obviously, it’s the most exciting thing ever to happen.
If you’ve already used previous versions of Windows, you’ll know the rough score already — initial optimism inevitably drained away by rubbish drivers, software manufacturers who’ve been slow to update their software despite 7 being basically the same as Vista and having over a year in which to do their goddamn jobs instead of sitting back and eating cake. There are however important undocumented changes to be aware of before you get started, especially in the light of the many bugs being automatically patched on this, the first day of what will one day become known as the Year of Windows 7 / Era of the Snake People From The Moon. Probably.
Changelog, 22/10/09
The traditional installation minigame has been removed. If you want the fun of formatting your whole drive only to find out half-way through installation that there’s a scratch on the disc, you must now scratch it yourself with a blunt compass point. Microsoft has however upgraded your inability to type a perfectly simple 94 character serial number, ensuring that you have to enter it three times before it works, despite it clearly being right, look, I totally checked it twice, oh wait that’s a G.
Windows no longer laughs maniacally during installation.
Ultimate Extras: While there is no Porn and Bikini wallpaper set supplied with Windows 7, Microsoft Customer Services has been instructed to assure the spouses of users with the Ultimate edition that in fact there is. Home Premium users must face the music for not covering up their screens fast enough. Please note: if you consider this insulting and patronising, remember the Ultimate Extras you got last time.
Disk Defragmenter and Chkdisk now run 40% slower in an attempt to convince you that they’re actually doing some good for your system despite things being bad enough that you’re running them. Registry cleaning software in the form of a pair of slowly rolling eyes of endless contempt has been added to Accessories.
The much-requested “TRY IT ANYWAY” button has been added to all file operations. Corrupted ZIP? Lack of hard drive space? Think you know better than Windows? Hit this button to ditch the error window and force it to at least give it a &^%$ing try. It won’t work, but at least you’ll know for sure and maybe feel better.
To cut down on the number of idiots online, tools like e-mail and Windows Messenger are no longer provided as standard. If you can get the necessary neurons together to download them, maybe you deserve your access.
The EULA has been rewritten in Wingdings to see if anyone notices.
“My Computer” has been renamed “Computer”. Thanks to DRM, “Your Computer” has been deemed too inaccurate by the European Court of Endless Pedantry.
Clicking the icon “Internet Explorer” no longer punches you in the face for your stupidity. Using Internet Explorer instead of absolutely anything else, up to and including a tin-can on a string, has been decreed both crime and punishment.
The dread portal of Ana’xhoom has been moved to the Documents folder for easier access. Please remember to sacrifice one file per day to the glory of Ana’xhoom.
The Purble Place competition has concluded after several long years. The first person to actually bother running it for more than five seconds, Mrs. Dawn Edmonton of Maine, has received her cheque for $4,000,000. Congratulations, Dawn!
Bigfoot has been returned to his home in the wallpaper.
The Solitaire cheat code now automatically texts your friends to stage an intervention. If you have no friends, the cards will fly around the screen as usual. Loser.
All PowerPoint presentations longer than five slides or containing the words “Mission Statement” will now be automatically deleted five minutes after being closed. No, really, you’re welcome. It’s the least we can do to apologise.
Gnaw: This Death Knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.
All online help replaced with the message “Just get a Mac, idiot…”
It is possible to upgrade from Windows 98. Oh, not as a cheap deal or anything, just reminding you. Seriously, it’s 2009. What the hell’s taking so long?
Assorted security hotfixes.
It works now, unlike Vista.
PC Plus: World of Wordcraft
Guess what game I was playing a lot of that month.
This was a fun article to write, even if I’m sure there’ll be at least one folk-etymology in there. I also managed to sneak in quite a few gags, which was a refreshing change from the norm. I love words (and highly recommend Bill Bryson’s books on the subject, especially Made In America) and it’s always good to know obscure little things that will trip you up in techie quizzes, such as where the word TWAIN actually comes from (it’s not an acronym) or the definition of ‘recursion’.
In retrospect, we should have left more space for the actual article part that runs along the bottom. When we planned out the page designs, we weren’t sure there’d be enough interesting stuff to say, but in the end it had to be cut down from about twice the length. It amuses me that while both ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ are often seen as interchangeable, they in fact stem from completely opposite ends of some imaginary freak-curve. Still, no matter. I think it’s quite a fun little feature.
I Can Write Microsoft Adverts Too
“So, that weak observational comedy. What’s up with that?”
I haven’t said anything here about Microsoft’s embarassing adverts in which a one-joke comic stumbles around being paid three million dollars to pretend to be Jerry Seinfeld’s best friend, mostly because of one thing. Criticise the adverts, and the same comment comes out of the woodwork every single blessed time:
“They work because people are talking about them!”
Newsflash: Bullshit. An advert works if it changes the perception of a company for the better, if it shifts product, or better fixes the company in the viewer’s brain. All else is the marketing equivalent of ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’. Here are three other adverts that would have gotten the same amount of chatter:
1. A large piece of poo slowly spins on a potter’s wheel. Emblazoned on the back, the word ‘Vista’.
2. “I’m a Mac.” “I’m a PC.” “And I’m John Gacy.”
3. Bill Gates re-enacts the opening of Barbarella.
People have been waiting for the Microsoft counter-attack against Apple for so long, ‘talk’ is pretty much irrelevant. Bill Gates is recognisable enough to mean that Microsoft doesn’t need the name boost. It doesn’t particularly matter how many boxes of Vista Microsoft can ship, not when 99.999% of the PC industry buys its product anyway. And somehow I don’t see many people rushing out to buy Vista as a result of seeing these stumbling adverts. So what’s the point?
You got me. I have no idea what marketing message they think they’re pushing with these badly written head-trips, but I doubt it’s in line with actual reality. The first one, set in a clown shoe store, literally goes nowhere. You can almost hear the money being dangled when Seinfeld stops yammering and starts up with the whole “So, Bill, as a super-endowed supergenius…” bit.
As for the second, Christ almighty. The whole concept of the joke is the two of them getting back to their roots and finding out what real people want, only for the two of them to show nothing but contempt for the ‘real people’ they’re staying with and bail. Microsoft: Out Of Step. Great slogan. Really makes them likeable.
But what would I know? Answer: Plenty.
The good thing is that according to the usual sources, the whole advert campaign’s been a miserable failure, and they’re now dropping the whole Seinfeld angle. Good. I don’t know how much they overpaid PR company for this embarassing farce of a $300 million campaign, but I like to think I have some suggestions for Phase 2.
And by Phase 2, I mean ‘starting from scratch’, of course.
The Top Five New Microsoft Campaigns
1. From Screen To Silver Screen: Microsoft develops a sense of humour and does what it’s done at COMDEX for years, doing Gates and Ballmer versions of movies in the cinema at the time. They’ve done this for The Matrix and Harry Potter and a couple of others too, I think. You won’t have seen them, because the legal attack dogs did a splendid job of pulling this slice of Microsoft’s humane side as far from the internet’s gaze as possible. These wouldn’t just glom off the big names, but do proper self-deprecating things with the stars of various movies, the actual sets, and Bill and Steve and co with proper costumes and dialogue. Hellboy having trouble with his PC? Gates shows up as Abe Sapien, only to get shot in the face as one too many UAC prompts show up. “We’re fixing that…” he groans, dying. Do one of the old ‘If The Starship Enterprise Ran On Windows’ gags, ending on “It may not clean up the Klingons, but we can certainly help with your taxes.” Have Gandalf mistake a Vista CD for the One Ring, and make Frodo go on an endless journey to deliver the warranty card. A whole year’s campaign, keeping people interested and getting them laughing with Microsoft for once.
2. Challenge Vista: Do the whole Mojave Experiment thing in reverse, by which I mean ‘not patronising and stupid’. The main character, a die-hard Vista hater character or some respectable celebrity like Stephen Fry, who delivers non-strawman reasons why people think it sucks. The hardware. The device drivers. Through the adverts, we see that those aren’t in fact a problem, not with anything particularly slick or showy, and definitely without bullshit, but with a simple, snappily cut demonstration of Vista easily deflecting viruses, running on outdated hardware, and all that other jazz. If Microsoft wants to win critics over, that’s the way to do it. And it’s not like there’s a lack of material. This would be combined with a boot-CD or other cut-down version of Vista with the slogan “Vista: See For Yourself”
3. Om Nom Nom: Spend the money on cake instead. Seriously. The Seinfeld adverts were pure Microsoft masturbation, leading the way for another inevitably doomed rebranding exercise for a product that everyone who buys a PC pays for anyway. When you own the world, you don’t need to worry about bad publicity as much as everyone else. $300 million buys a lot of cake. Yummy cake. Scrummy cake. Cake!
4. The Vista Challenge: A puzzle within a series of adverts, with the winners getting free Microsoft stuff. Why? Simple. Individual copies of Vista don’t mean a damn thing, and there’s a solid crossover with the people who play things like ARGs and the ones who buy things like Linux. In watching the adverts, you still get to worm a bit of advert into their ears, even if they spend the whole series bitching about it.
5. And Of Course… Bill Gates re-enacts the opening of Barbarella. Some things, the world just needs to see. This is one of those things.
I’ll just hold on here for that cheque and phonecall, Microsoft.
No hurry. Whenever you’re ready.
$%&^ing Toilet Seats Again
From the BBC’s Blindly Obvious Department:
Some computer keyboards harbour more harmful bacteria than a toilet seat, research has suggested.
Oh, good grief, not this old yawner again. Yes. Yes, keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats, the reason being that toilet seats are not dirty. By reading this site, your buttocks are automatically not only declared officially clean, but also surprisingly fragrant. But not somewhere that germs particularly congregate. The floor? Ick central. Under the bowl? Nice knowing you. The seat? You could eat your dinner off it, and I’m reliably informed that there are clubs in Soho where you can do considerably more.
Any company that releases any bit of marketing comparing the cleanliness of toilets and any second entity, but especially keyboards, ever frakking again will find this out soon. I’ve already petitioned the government to enforce a new ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, where the strikes are conducted with a length of birch, and the ‘out’ to be outed from consisting of the entire of civilised society.
You have been warned, lazy press release writers. The revolution begins shortly.
The Phantom Of 989Studios
Seriously, a long defunct games company has been sending this request for a non-existent page once a day for aeons now. What’s going on? Creepy…