Chris Meller

Over on Reddit, I found this story, titled New Microsoft Ad Features Girl’s Orgasm.

Now before we get into this, please, go watch the video (pick the first guy on the left, that’s the dad). Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere, I’ll be here when you’re done.

Taps foot semi-impatiently…

Ok, done? That’s great…

So this girl’s “orgasm” is one quick gasp as the father imagines the worst possible things that could happen to his (hot) daughter while she’s out on a date with this loser, spurning him to change the curfew they’d just finished negotiating. The question being posed is, is it appropriate for Microsoft to use the image of teenage sex (in conjunction with the stereotype of the loser boyfriend, no less) to help sell their Suspicious “Male”-detection module of the new Hotmail service?

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything scandalous about this ad. I find it creative and a fresh perspective from a company (Microsoft) long known for being the stereotypical hard-core straight-laced business user (much like ‘PC’ in the Apple Mac vs. PC ads). I think the real question here is much broader: How Prudish is American Society?

Ever seen the movie Eurotrip? Hey, it had Michelle Trachtenberg in it, I couldn’t not watch… Well, in one scene, they’re hitchhiking along and she decides she’ll get a ride… by taking off her shirt.

No one stops.

The point is, this straight-laced American highschooler thought taking her shirt off would get any number of creepy guys to pull over and give them all rides. Unfortunately, they find out that in Europe, seeing a chick with her shirt off isn’t a new thing. Their example was an orange juice ad with lesbians in it, which certainly hammered home the point to me (perverts!). Elsewhere in the movie, the head mistress at a brothel claims that America was founded by prudes, which seems to be an accurate claim given the rest of the evidence we see throughout.

So I ask you again: Why is this ad groundbreaking? Are we that delusional to think that our children aren’t finding out about sex elsewhere, and that a 2-second gasp in an advertisement from the 800lb gorilla of software is going to turn them all into hormone-crazy sex heathens?

Let’s grow up, America. Stop blaming the advertising for turning your children into sex-starved homicidal maniacs and start taking a little extra responsibility for raising a child that’s broken, alright?

Hiding the truth from our society as a whole doesn’t make it go away. Pretending sex doesn’t happen doesn’t mean your children aren’t having it. This isn’t a nightmare, where it will go away if we just ignore it long enough, this is real life… It’s here to stay.

After ordering a TechNet subscription last week, now that Microsoft offers a significantly cheaper “Direct” (ie: download-only) version, I got a postcard in the mail today offering me a whopping $200 off an early-bird registration to Microsoft’s TechEd 2007 conference.

Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d check the TechEd site and see how expensive this particular conference was. I’m constantly amazed at how expensive some conferences can be, while the particularly interesting ones like WordCamp are 100% free.

In case you were wondering, the regular price for TechEd ‘07 is $1,995¹, but if you register before April 7th, you can save a whopping $200 and get it for the rock-bottom price of $1,795.

I had thought about doing a little “What you could get instead of going to TechEd” segment, but turns out I’m too lazy. Suffice it to say: a lot².

Now if only I could convince my boss to blow about $3,000 (including travel, meals, etc.) to send me to Orlando for 4 days…

1. Can’t we just round up to $2,000 already? It’s $5 lousy bucks… ↩
2. Like an Apple iPhone and about a year of unlimited data service from Cingular ↩

I checked out the headline Reader Poll: Will Windows Vista send you when I saw it on my Google homepage, mainly because I wanted to see what the rest of the sentence was.

Clicking on it popped up the full-text of Reader Poll: Will Windows Vista send you running to a new OS? and the no-javascript message got me interested, so I decided to load up the article and check out the poll.

Am I the only one that realizes that this poll is totally, obviously, and painfully anti-Vista and anti-Microsoft in general? I mean, every single option may as well have “if I absolutely have to…” tacked on to the end. There’s not a single positive remark made about Vista on the entire poll, despite its increased security measures and the amazing Aero glass effects.

What kind of statistical results can you honestly expect from a poll that could easily be summed up with a single “No way will I upgrade to Vista” option? We may as well have called the post “Why won’t you upgrade to Vista in the new year?”

Thank you for objective and fact-filled reporting, Life Hacker… *unsubscribed*

Found a very useful matrix that actually lists the differences between each Windows Vista edition.

Check it out at Extreme Tech and say goodbye to your Vista edition confusion!

Early this morning, as my insomnia-driven computer addiction ensued at hours in which even the birds refuse to wake, I noticed that a couple of new Windows Updates had been deployed by my in-house WSUS box and were ready for installation on my client machines. I thought we’d already had our patch-Tuesday for the month, so I decided to check out what was being updated.

Much to my surprise, there was a new version of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (aka Terminal Services client) app available. Since, as far as I remember, there has never been an update to this program (since it’s initial inclusion in Windows XP), I thought I’d go check it out.

Thanks to my handy dandy (unofficial) Microsoft Download Notification RSS feed, I was able to quickly track down the stand-alone download package¹.

For those that may be interested, the short description of this update is:

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) provides a way to use any new Terminal Services features introduced in Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” from a computer running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1.

This simple update boasts a host of changes. Most notably are:

• Lots of new Authentication updates
• 32-bit color support
• Font-smoothing capability
• Terminal Services “Remote Program” capability
• Enhanced Device Redirection (for things such as printers connected locally)

My favorite feature, however, is without a doubt the new Monitor Spanning capability. That’s right, now I can finally utilize both of my monitors when doing a remote desktop. Oh sweet joy of joys. Microsoft, sometimes I just can’t help but love you guys²!

For those interested in more details, here’s a link to the stand-alone download, and the knowledge base article³.

Update: In case you have difficulty finding them yourselves, here are download links for other platforms. Still, I’d probably just snag it over Windows Update… Windows 2003: here Windows 2003 x64: here Windows XP x64: here

1. Oddly enough, Googling around and searching both Microsoft.com and the Microsoft Knowledge Base directly proved to be useless. ↩
2. And god knows I try not to… ↩
3. By the way… When did these start requiring passport logins? KB articles have always been publicly available, haven’t they? ↩