Tech News and Rambling from a Surly Little Bastard…
Hurray! Vista SP1 is now available to TechNet Plus subscribers, just like it should have been all along.
If you’re looking to download, be sure to read the notes about it only being available under Top Downloads for the time being.
The original article I read said it was also now available to MSDN subscribers, but I’m too lazy to find that link…
Vista SP1 was RTM earlier this month, and they announced a laid-back release schedule.
Their plans for slowly rolling it out to end users sound great, but I have to wonder why Microsoft doesn’t plan on releasing SP1 to IT Pros through TechNet until it’s publicly available for users to download.
This seems like negating the entire point of the TechNet community if you ask me. It’s there so its members can get their hands on essentially all of Microsoft’s software for testing and pre-deploy purposes. Several Windows 2008 Server builds have been on TechNet, and it was available for full download the day it went RTM. Why, then, is Vista’s service pack different?
Update: Per the rumors, the release schedule for SP1 has indeed been changed, so that technical users get updates sooner than expected.
I still don’t understand why we’re waiting for TechNet. If nothing else, those users should get it at the same time VL customers do - they’re likely one and the same people.
I was waiting to rebuild my Vista box at home1 until SP1 was available, but it looks like that’s still going to take too long. Maybe I’ll move ahead with my plan to make that box a Windows 2008 Server and using my Ubuntu laptop as my primary machine…
Ed Bott published fresh browser stats this morning, and I thought I would comment on some aspects…
The point that Ed makes about the lack of increase in Firefox’s market share is disappointing, but are we really surprised? I’ve said for quite some time that Firefox is geared towards the tech enthusiasts among us and that it really offers no hard benefits for your average every-day user.
Back when Mozilla was competing only with IE6 (we’ll continue ignoring Opera and Safari), it offered great benefits like tabbed browsing and native popup blocking, etc. Unfortunately, by the time it caught any ground, Microsoft had already usurped a great deal of its momentum by releasing the most-needed features in IE7. Sure, Firefox’s amazing extension support offers a lot of flexibility to those of us who consider ourselves power users on the web, but does the average person who only has one computer need 10 different bookmark syncing extensions or the inspection capabilities of Firebug? No…
The most interesting thing I see in these stats is the market penetration of IE7.
I run some basic stats on all our sites at work (mainly to let me know what cool stuff I can and cannot use), and IE6 still has an 80% lead over IE7 in our user base. Since we’re getting traffic from totally technically inept users, that’s a somewhat unfortunate statistic. Even more distressing is that IE has a 95% lead over all other browsers combined.
Clearly both Mozilla and Microsoft have done a fair job marketing their newer products to technical users who keep up with such things, but they’ve failed miserably at extolling the virtues to the average user — and that’s something that needs to change.
How do we do that? I haven’t a clue… I develop the stuff, I don’t market it.
The really interesting question, given the recent announcement that IE8 has passed the ACID2 test, is whether this will matter in a year. If all browsers follow standards properly, do we care which browser anyone uses? Of course if IE8 doesn’t drastically improve upon the market adoption of IE7 thus far, it may take another 10 years before everyone is seeing the web as it was intended to be seen…
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.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Screenshots
I threw together some screenshots and comments on Flickr while I was quickly giving IE 8 a run through tonight, if anyone’s interested.
IE 8 Beta 1 gallery