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Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled
An anonymous reader writes "Valleywag says the Jerry Seinfeld ads are over — In a phone call, Frank Shaw confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Seinfeld, and echoes his underlings' spin that the move was planned. There is the 'potential to do other things' with Seinfeld, which Shaw says is still 'possible.' He adds: 'People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.'"
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/15/
How we know is more important than what we know.
"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."
As if anyone understood the ad at all, let alone were happy about it.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I for one actually enjoyed those ads! To see those two together in a commercial was uncanny.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Well the ad wasn't exactly imaginative. If it was supposed to compete with Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, which many people apparently find comical and true, it didn't do a very good job. They really need to come up with something better than that.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
I toldja - they shoulda gone with a real comedian.
I was looking for them working their way back through the comedic genius of history ... perhaps W.C. Fields next. All the way back to Aristophanes.
Or, in a more famous joke:
"Vista's slow, it's fat, I can't get drivers, my network grinds to a crawl when I play an mp3! What do you call that?"
"... The Aristocrats!"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Problem was that the sexual tension between those two guys was too intense - it would never have ended well.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."
That sentence makes George Orwell roll over in his grave. All that "not un-" faked vocabulary and smugness, just say "People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but we expected it" and get it over with!
...I'm seeing those ads all over the place; I've only seen the Seinfeld ads twice, I think.
What's strange is this --didn't MS drop the ad agency that came up with the Mojave ads because they were a flop?
I guess when you've got nothing ...you've just got nothing.
I thought the first ad was limp, but I actually enjoyed the second one and was looking forward to more. Not that it would have made any difference to my OS-buying proclivities, but I thought they were at least interesting.
FADE IN
A Chair
VOICEOVER: Vista. Use it. Or Else.
FADE TO BLACK
They are just too rich to connect with regular folks. Besides, it has nothing to do with Vista, it is just an exercise of the cilt of personality of Bill Gates.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
"We made these ads because we knew you wouldn't like them. Yes, it was all planned. We made them so we could pull them. Now Vista's sales are not going to improve in any way. This is also planned. It's all part of a very clever plot in which we look like a bunch of idiots wasting time and money. Amazing! Fantastic! This is why we're number 1."
Yeah, Ubuntu really blew me away:
- Every time an update occurs, it takes more and more space on my hard disk, and the boot screen is filled with 100 versions of linux kernels.
- It took me one week to get my wifi card to work properly with wpa, with all the incomplete/outdated documentation available. Eventually, I found, by chance, a message on a forum.
- After a kernel update, my wifi card couldn't work anymore. My card is not an alien from another planet. It is a well-known card model.
- So I went back to the older kernel. What happened? Nautilus didn't work anymore!
- A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with 3 Gb of RAM).
I am a software engineer for a living, but when I use my system, I expect it to run out-of-the-box,
I want to feel like the base customer, not the software engineer.
It was an advertisement about nothing.
Haven't you guys ever seen an episode of Seinfeld?
...I for one LIKED the ads, with its 'nothingness' agenda... Surely they would have known that this brand campaign would need TIME and COMMITMENT to have a payoff!
....
I'll repeat that: Surely they would have known that this brand campaign would need TIME and COMMITMENT to have a payoff!
Maybe at least it's not too late...
For everyone who hasn't already committed suicide based on the promptings of the "fail" parent, please see this.
Well parent is a little flame-ish, but the point he makes is correct. The link is rather biased, and does seem to be making a planned move seem like msft having failed, without providing evidence. But hey, this is the intertubez who said we have to provide evidence for what we report right ?
blog plug -> The Darker Side of Light
They got people talking. The last two TWiT podcasts, for example, included long discussions of the ads. The discussion was critical of them--but the ads got Leo Laporte and his guests to spend something like 30 minutes of some of the most valuable podcast time on the...er......uhm..,pod(?) talking about them.
One of the guests, not quite seriously, did a detailed symbolic analysis of the second ad. He said the old lady represented Steve Jobs--she had been living with the family for the same amount of time since Steve came back to Apple.
I must be missing something. Cancelled?
Cancelled is what happens when a contract is revoked. As far as I know, Microsoft is continuing with Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Cancelled is what happens if they were planning to make more of the same vein. I see no indication of that, but of the expectant bloggers.
Microsoft had always said that the Bill & Seinfield ads were not a campaign unto itself, but an icebreaker, or rather, "phase one". Indeed, it would not surprise me if Microsoft's announcement was all about the new ads, and didn't mention Bill & Seinfield at all.
Me thinks Valleywag focused on what they wanted to hear, not what was actually said overall.
Maybe it is because I'm from the UK and I've grown up with Monty Python but I thought these adverts were great though pointless. If they were designed to make me laugh they did a good job. I guess some of the fanbois here can't look at them subjectively. Oh look its Bill Gates we hate him, Oh look its Seinfield, he sucks as a comedian. So in their mind these are already gonna suck, everybody said so before they aired and nobody should change their opinion for fear of being weak minded. I doubt Seinfield wrote these adverts and I don't care if he did anyway, I enjoyed them and I'd rather see more of this than the next crop of ideas from MS, at least they were lying to me telling me how great Vista is.
Jonathanjk.com
Microsoft says Vista is over â" In a phone call, Steve Ballmer, confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Vista, and echoes his underlings' spin that the move was planned. There is the "potential to do other things" with Windows, which Ballmer says is still "possible." He adds: "People would have been happier if everyone loved Vista, but this was not unexpected.""
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
As a mostly Linux user, I don't actually give a toss about this topic anyway - in much the same way that I really didn't give a toss when IBM used a white-haired kid to advertise Linux a few years ago.
I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.
Yes, you can't beat Linux and scripting for being able to embrace the power of a computer - but you also can't beat XP as a games platform and as a platform for knocking out training slides in Powerpoint and whilst I don't do much graphics or video editing work, there's nothing on Linux to compete with Photoshop etc. (though The GIMP does everything I need from a graphics editor).
So please don't tar us all with the same brush.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
And if Rule 34 doesn't apply, Rule 35 will.
Just keep in mind to periodically check if someone has registered "billjerrysteve-fanfic.com".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I saw the awful Gates & Seinfeld commercial last night where Gates does the Robot, and commented to my wife that Microsoft must have the lowest advertising ROI of all time. It's mind boggling that a company with that much money could do so poorly with their advertising campaigns. They can certainly afford to do better, so why don't they?
It's surprising that Crispin Porter is their agency, since they're about the highest rated in the advertising game. Perhaps it's something about Microsoft that exudes a lameness that overwhelms all else.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
...does not use that form of marketing preferred calculation... you insensitive clod!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Ah, so you agree, it is much better than Vista.
(Damn Ubuntu fan boys always pointing out how much better they have it;-)
I knew that! Who said I didn't?!
Oh, I did.
Clicked pie.
The commercials seem to be about nothing. We don't learn about the product. I don't get how this was suppose to be helpful to Microsoft.
I think a better idea, for a gimmick, would be, "Try Windows Vista. If you don't like it after 30 days, we'll buy you a copy of Ubuntu."
(Yes, I'm trying for humour here.)
I must say this a hundred times a year.
The largest road in London (the M25 motorway that circles the entire city and has more cars on it than any other road in the UK) has a large warehouse by the side of it (Jct 27/28 if memory serves) which has, in twenty-foot-high letters:
Sericol. More than ink. Solutions.
written on it. What the hell do they sell? *Do* they in fact sell ink? Do they offer "ink solutions"? (whatever the hell they are) Do they sell printing? Do they process squid? I have no bloody idea. What if I just wanted ink? Sod it. It's easier to phone someone else.
About once a week, I'll see a building, advertisment or painted vehicle which is supposed to be drawing my attention to a company, product, or service and doesn't tell me what those products are. These are all examples that I've seen and which are complete copies of an advert, or sign on a van. Some of the product names have been changed because they were SO memorable that I can't remember the exact wording, website, logo etc.
Fred's Services Ltd. Call 0800XXXXXXX. (Services FOR WHAT? And they even paid to have a freefone number)
Adventis. www.adventis.com (I made up the name/website)
Patricks - Solutions for the modern world. (no services, no phone number, no website, nothing.)
(Funny logo) - Ring 08XXXXXXXXX for our full range of services. (no, you bloody print them on the advert, or at least give me a vague idea).
Vista was designed for five-nines reliability, but due to a specification error the decimal point was shifted.
these ads were tipping point for me.. seeing how pathetic Gates was in them, I'm pretty sure now that no one at microsoft cares anymore.. neither about ads nor about developing operating systems..
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.
I'm afraid that you are projecting a bit there. At least I hope that you are projecting and not just painting it pink.
Let us disregard for a moment that this is a topic where people ridicule Microsoft.
Take a look at the front page. The left side.
Do you see a Microsoft section? How 'bout Apple? Linux?
Now... take a look at this post's icon. Bill Gates as a Borg.
Apple and Linux meanwhile have their regular logos.
This is Slashdot.
It is a social norm to be a Linux fanboy and to a lesser extent an Apple fanboy while hating Microsoft, Bill Gates and everything they stand for.
And the best part is - management promotes such behavior.
Microsoft and Gates are evil, Apple is shiny and Linux is cute.
Its not a law (yet) but its a very good idea to keep in mind if you like posting above 0 level.
Nothing kills karma faster than going to a Apple or Linux topic and suggesting that "it ain't that great".
Sometimes, just asking is there something LIKE THAT which is talked about in the post can get you bad karma.
This is Slashdot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled "
Even Digg managed to find a more appropriate headline:
"Microsoft's New Ad:Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman Lookalike"
linking to the NYTimes article "Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine 'I'm a PC'"
To those who actually think the Gates/Seinfeld got canceled: the commercials played for one week each. Now in the third week and today we get the 'new' style. Do you honestly think they scrambled to get something done within a week?
I know the Slashdot crowd hates MS with a passion but don't let your hate cloud your judgement.
Wow. You express a lame joke with tortured English and suggest that everyone who fails to get it is too stupid to live.
Now that's how you turn defeat into victory, baby!
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
... shrinkage!
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
The symbolism seems sufficiently obvious. But it leaves me with a major set of questions. How did Steve Jobs manage to bribe the ad agency to come up with the idea? How did they manage to get Microsoft to fall for it? Does the Jobs reality distortion field really extend that far?
I guess, since a lot of creative ad people are still Mac fanboys, the first part might have been easy. But the second part must have been the pitch from hell. Perhaps it only worked because the Gates mansion is so vast that Gates has never found the TV room and so never seen the programme.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Thanks... having learned my multiplication tables by rote in primary school, I was wondering what 'forty five of population' meant...
Oh, and the author needs a battering for talking about sentence parsing in a sentence with a missing definitive article.
I am definitely tagging this "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense"
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This was planned. They are releasing these ads on a Thursday schedule - and the release for today has obviously been in the hopper for a while.
Way off-topic here, but, out of interest, have you tried PC-BSD? I've been using FreeBSD on my laptop for a few years, and had no problems with it (WiFi works, multiple programs can play sound on the cheap AC97 sound hardware, 3D works, kernel updates don't break things). PC-BSD is based on the same core, but is a bit more user-friendly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Call me old fashioned, but I was taught that when extolling the virtues of a product, the marketing should be able to answer the 'so what?' and 'prove it' tests.
The Microsoft ad seemed more of an indulgence by a person, agency or client that just wanted to so 'do something' without wanting any return on investment.
Totally forgettable.
AT&ROFLMAO
I guess some of the fanbois here can't look at them subjectively
No, we're trying to look at them objectively. As a comedy short, they were okay. As a Microsoft advert, they were pointless, because the conveyed no indication of why you should buy their products. Still, they're not as bad as the old MSN adverts which had 'Homeward Bound' as the theme, and cut just before:
Tonight I'll sing my songs again,
I'll play the game and pretend.
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me.
Shades of mediocrity, like emptiness in harmony, sums up MSN pretty well, but it probably wasn't quite what the advertisers were aiming for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I saw them too and I enjoyed them. Now give me some karma as well.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I went past a sign advertising Visteon for three years before getting around to looking up what they made. Turns out it's car electronics, and so I'm nowhere near their target market anyway. I suspect most of the other adverts you see are similar. If you're in their target market, you'll already have their catalogue. The ads are there so when you come across their catalogue in a pile of others you'll think 'Ah, Foobaz Widgets - I recognise that name, they must be trustworthy'. The only way to combat this kind of advertising is a strategy I've employed for about a year of actively avoiding products where the brand seems good but you can't quite place why.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If they wanted to make commercials in the vein of Seinfeld, they should have hired Larry David. He seems to have been the real genius behind that series.
That's probably the thinking at Microsoft. Apple has these ads with two guys talking to each other, and that's cool. We should do the same. And, who's cooler than that 1990 comedy sensation, Jerry Steinfeld?
The problem is that Apple had two people, one young and cool, the other old and not-so-cool. Microsoft's ads had two old, not-so-cool people in them. I'm sure that all of them college kids really related to two 50+ years olds wandering around and talking about random stuff.
I can hear them now: "Hey, that's just like my grandpa! Right before we put him in the nursing home."
When you aren't sure what an Ad is trying to sell you, there is a serious problem with the Ad.
Not necessarily, if the ads are part of a sequence. The first ads get you interested, the last ones do the sale.
Of course, if you still don't know what's being sold by the end of the process, then, indeed, there is a problem.
Remember Windows 95?
"If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
You make a grown man cry"
Oh, wait, they left that last line out. Wonder why...
Best Ad I've seen on the side of a lorry for while was ( something like )
A huge picture of a baby and a caption: "The only thing we don't deliver. Andys Parcels"
And the worst one is a lorry which looks like it might have something to do with double glazing which has a photo on it of an angry looking man with expletive signs coming out of his mouth saying "Just pick up the piggin phone and call us". Er, no thanks.
Yep.
Once I was thinking of buying a leather jacket, but was new in that city, so I didn't know any good leather stores.
Then one day on a road I saw this gigantic outdoor for a leather store with the company name on it and a pretty girl wearing some leather jacket.
I remember looking passing that sign some two or three times looking for a hidden address, url, phone, anything. Alas, I had to search for a leather store elsewhere.
The show was not about "nothing", as joked about in some episodes, it was about four *extremely* *unlikeable* people *doing* nothing.
The last episode was the clue-by-four to the head for all those viewers who didn't get it; they bring back all the people whose lives had been casually wrecked by the main characters, and in the end (SPOILER ALERT, if you care), they end up all locked in a cell, the ultimate punishment that they have to spend their time together.
And from this Microsoft thought they could improve their branding? If anything, it's somehow appropriate, Microsoft is the company that casually wrecks your (digital) life.
Who the fuck is Valleywag?
Claims another victim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld_curse#The_.22Seinfeld_curse.22
The show was about nothing, so the ads made no sense, thats the only amout of logic I found in all of this, isn't that irony for ya
if they were discordian. penny hits the nail on the head. i have no idea what shoe squishing, churro munching jerry seinfeld is trying to sell, or for that matter what bill "wiggle-ass" gates has on the horizon besides hip displacia and a completely unrealistic scenario of him being spotted in the local mall by a million dollar celebrity.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Todays Crossword Puzzle..... Down ...
6 Best Operating System, 5 letters starts with L
Answers
Down ...
6 LINUX
No one is interested in your dud os vistcrap
No one is interested in your has been comic
With the epic failure of this campaign I would expect:
1) ad agency fired
2) ad agency employees fired
seinfeld can be funny as a comic at times, sure, in that stupid show.... nope.
and as for the puppet master behind the comic larry david, well I don't find him or his show that funny. The only reason to watch it is for Cheryl Hines who really needs to be in other projects more often....
we've all moved on to Linux and its time the rest of the planet catches up. the ads only confirm it your out of touch with reality and time to just go away, please.
Get Linux
Get your computer back
Get things done
1311393600 - Back to Black
From my Google QTOD gadget. No kidding:
Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Seinfeld show was a show about nothing, Microsoft's ad was an ad about nothing. Now, the reason it didn't work is simple. It wasn't funny.
(Bill shakes his ass)
That whoever wrote those ads will never be allowed to inflict that kind of stupidity on the world again.
The two ads I saw made less sense than Seinfelds show ever did.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Maybe you would only have to say it once a year if we knew what your point is.
It is all part of the plan! This is actually another ad! bewware!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
What's the fixation with changing the kernel all the time?
This isn't Windows. You don't have to patch everything constantly.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The quote is from Genesis. But otherwise OFF TOPIC. ( very interesting links ). Power Down Troll.
> - A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my
> computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with
> 3 Gb of RAM).
This sounds like the Lemming Troll's flavor of the month.
It's interesting how they can find more obscure excuses why
their Linux installs are allegedly running poorly. Many of
us would not know of some of these "services" if not for
this whining. It's a sort of perverse public service in a
way.
Many of us torture boxes far more persistently than any
unnamed indexing service. That's why we tend to use Unix
in general and Linux in particular.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You sound like you may have tried Ubuntu a while ago -- have you tried a recent version? I say because I feel your pain when it comes to wireless difficulties, but I honestly haven't had those problems in Ubuntu for about the past two versions.
And here's a tip -- if you get the latest version (8.04) and it works for you, keep it -- do NOT upgrade to the next version. 8.04 is a long-term release and will be supported for years.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Hell for me would be listening to lawyers and advertising people talk. However, marketing is the art of calculated manipulation. If people understand what the marketer wants understood, it is highly functional, regardless of how many "rules" it breaks.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Apple could probably doctor those videos to insert Justin Long as Mac, maybe do a few minor voice overs and BAM you've got a Mac/PC commercial. Those commercials were horrible.
Even further than that the Windows Vista commercials where they introduce it as the next version to "real people" and show their reaction. Ridiculously bad.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
Your post was a glimmer of sensibility until you got to the "Vista sucks, so give it away for free" part.
That's like saying if Microsoft gave away all the unfixable Xbox 360s that RRoD, people would not care about the red ring problem anymore.
Wouldn't the fastest route to fix the Vista image is to polish up Windows 7 as quickly as possible, get it on the shelf and sweet Vista under a rug?
Power Down Bill...Now stay that way, until you decide to ship a DECENT Product.
So they cancel something that was bad, back to something that made no sense to me the first time. The OS/2 Warp ads where all they show you is a bunch of people sitting around saying "wow, that's cool, I didn't know you could do that" didn't work for IBM the first time. Not sure their marketing is heading in the right direction with all this.
The commercials were lame, but as far as crap commercials they're far from the worst. I feel like a good 75% of commercials have been developed not for the sake of the client but rather so that the advertising company has yet another portfolio piece.
Sales of Vista are supposedly strong. Apparently Microsoft really didn't need the ads.
It also makes sense that Microsoft couldn't do much direct Vista promotion in the ads because they're already doing this in other ads and because they've announced that Windows 7 is coming out early next year. If, on the other hand, the ads attempted to promote Windows 7 this might appear to be at odds with representations that Vista is a great product as is.
So maybe all of the potentially substantive content for the ads was eliminated to remove the appearance of conflicting information to the less discerning customer.
For those who don't know, during the last season of his TV show "Seinfeld", Jerry Seinfeld was offered $200 million US ($100 per season) for 2 final seasons of the show. He turned it down. Since the show ended, Jerry has used his voice in one animated movie, done a few American Express commercials and a few TV appearances. I think it's pretty safe to assume that Jerry Seinfeld is rich and that if you are going to get him to work for you, it's going to be expensive.
So we can assume that getting him for the commercials wasn't cheap. Now the Microsoft shill tells us that this was "not unexpected" that the commercials failed. I guess the meetings on the spots went something like this:
Ad agency: Yeah, these ads are going to cost a lot of money because Jerry Seinfeld is probably the most expensive guy you can get for an ad. And preliminary test audiences have shown us that 60% hate the ads and 70% don't understand the point of them.
Microsoft: Sign us up now!
Just gives a whole new meaning to "clueless" when it comes to Microsoft. Maybe it would have been better to have just said "Look, we knew the ads were quirky, but we hoped they would catch on" rather than saying essentially "We knew most likely it would fail but we spent the money anyway because we are idiots and our shareholders won't hold us accountable".
These ads remind me of the "slice of life" ads from the '80s where this guy wearing nothing but a towel (or a pair of boxers... it was a while back) walks by the breakfast table. I don't even remember what they were advertising, cigarettes or something. That was "avant garde" 20 years ago, but now it's just tired.
Or maybe it's related to this "Halo" easter egg?
I didn't quite get the "hip wriggle" thing at the end of the first commercial. Was Bill Gates basically saying "I'm a billionaire, kiss my ass"?
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Well, I personally always perform the upgrades (Gentoo here) because I love having everything as up-to-date/bleeding-edge as possible. That's just my personality. I like things new, fresh and up-to-date.
Personally, I'm willing to put up with some of the issues that may result, and I do try to provide feedback if I do find a potential issue.
Some people just want things to work. And, to be fair, I'm the same way. For my "normal, everyday use," I use Windows Vista. For whatever people may say about it, it does just work with everything that I want it to. For my technical tinkering, I use Gentoo.
Sales of Vista are supposedly strong.
In Soviet Russia, sales of Soviet goods were good, they had great market share, they were the only product on the shelf. You think the "Mac Tax" is bad, what if you had to buy Macs with black market dollars?
Heck, you pretty much have to buy XP with black market dollars. You can't buy it on anything but a mini-notebook, officially, you have to buy Vista and use downgrade rights.
And yet... that's what people are doing. Not only that, but enough people are specifically demanding XP that companies are STILL offering it as an option through various licensing tricks.
Vista selling well? With XP still shipping despite everything Microsoft's done to prevent it, months after XP has been discontinued? You gotta be kidding.
I am completely guessing here, but I gotta think that this cancelation is part of the campaign. This announcement will probably get as much exposure as the ads themselves.
Either that, or this has been a gigantic embarrassing blunder by a company that actually has a lot at stake on this.
Seinfeld's motto was: "No hugging, no learning." Microsoft's motto is, "Embrace, extend and extinguish." No wonder Jerry and Bill have gone separate ways. One hates hugging, the other insists upon it.
Seinfeld Look Alike: Ever notice that Churros and shoes are funny ... ... ...
Mac: Who's that guy?
PC: I hired him for $10 million to distract people from noticing how bad Vista is.
Mac: Is it working?
Seinfeld Look Alike: Ever notice how funny commercials about nothing are
PC: Not really
[Insert pithy quote here]
What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials? Holy crap do they also wallpaper the walls at Microsoft with 100 bills just before they repaint them so they can figure out how to waste money even faster?
Hmm... well, there HAS been a lot of discussion about these terrible commercials. Now there is discussion about them being cancelled.
Would we have given them this much attention otherwise? Maybe the intent was exactly that, to raise the "WTF" and to get people to speculate what they meant. They just failed, and nobody really cared all that much.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What about the rumors that the replacement are going to be a "PC Guy" lookalike kvetching about how Windows is so misunderstood?
One part of his statement resonates with me... the kernel update. I went through one of those that "broke" my TV video card. By that point, I had forgotten that the recovery was a few simple steps, so I set about to reinstall the OS. But why should a kernel update break that?
Still, I prefer any Linux of Microsoft Windows. Why does Windows still force the user to use a single partition? Doesn't it make sense to have a programs partition, an OS partition, and a user (or documents) partition that is easily setup and made default during install? That way, I won't lose the other two when one goes down. (This one among many Windows gripes).
Are you a slave to karma? If I spin the wheel will you be a king reborn? Will you be coming back, coming back for the last time?
Bow-ties are cool.
people would love the ads...if they were discordian.
No, at least some of us think the ads are completely f'tarded too. Hail Eris.
- Every time an update occurs, it takes more and more space on my hard disk, and the boot screen is filled with 100 versions of linux kernels.
So, you've been using Ubuntu for 100 Linux kernel upgrades? You must really love it!
Modern versions hide all those past kernels, and if wasting a few megabytes every kernel upgrade is your complaint, I can't imagine you like Windows any better.
- It took me one week to get my wifi card to work properly with wpa, with all the incomplete/outdated documentation available. Eventually, I found, by chance, a message on a forum.
Mine worked out of the box. When I've tried other laptops which don't, I hit the forums right away -- it's called "Google", have you heard of it?
- So I went back to the older kernel. What happened? Nautilus didn't work anymore!
I use Kubuntu, and I barely browse files, so I can't speak to that. But I've never found downgrading a kernel to break anything.
- A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with 3 Gb of RAM).
First: "Not respond" is utter BS. It does respond, just slowly.
Second: Sounds like you don't know how to build a computer. Quad-core with 3 gigs of RAM, and I'll bet it all runs off a single 7200 RPM drive.
And finally, updatedb can be disabled easily -- and even if it couldn't, newer Ubuntus come with a version that only does partial sweeps.
And I have to agree with the other AC -- sounds like you would agree that it's an upgrade from Vista.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I can see Apple's response to this admission of failure, now.
Mac: Hello, I'm a Mac.
PC: An I'm a PC.
Mac: What's wrong PC you look a little down?
PC: Well, Mac's got this slick advertising campaign-thing going, so...
Mac: You mean like how the benefits and ease of using a Mac is explained in contrast to the competition?
PC: Yeah, and--
Mac: And your new ads don't represent any of that?
PC: Well, yeah, but--
Mac: In fact, the only thing your ads really did have was a shoe-squeezing, churro-munching, butt-wiggling figurehead and a worn-out comedy act that's staler than month old toast.
PC: Well, it's not all bad. It got people talking--
Mac: Yeah, "WTF" maybe, that's not good talking.
PC: But, those ads did do wonders to show off the capabilities of the Mac, y'know?
Mac: Wait, what?
PC: Yeah, the ad agency uses Macs for all of their productions.
Mac: Gimme a break.
PC: I will not. I'll have you know the entire campaign was done in iMovie.
Mac: That's bull--
PC: Oh yeah. That horrible ad campaign? We wouldn't have been able to get it done without the ease of use of a brand new iMac. I guess it's really your fault.
Mac: Oh jesus--
PC: Do you feel it, Mac? The darkness wriggling inside of you?
Mac: I'm gonna be sick--
PC: This is your fault, Mac!
*Mac doubles-over and throws up on the floor.*
PC: Yeah, that's it. Now bend over and take your Vista install like a good little--
The future. Deceitful.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Now that's odd. I don't seem to recall 'the Soup Nazi' throwing any chairs on Seinfeld. I thought he only did that in the M$ board room?
And here is your head. *woosh*
His show was based off his stand-up. Simply put, it's comedy by observation. He see's something odd and then mentions it.
There's a show called 'Seinfeld' with a character named 'Jerry Seinfeld'. That show is not about that character.
I'm sure there's some formal term in literary criticism, perhaps in latin, for the use of a narrator to give us a peek into a world when the focus of that world is not the narrator, but some other character the narrator observes.
I don't know the term, but that is what we have here. In this case, Jerry is just a vehicle to transport into the world of George.
The show originated and was written primary (in the beginning) by Larry David. George is Larry's alter ego. The show is about George.
The show had very little to do with Seinfeld's comedy. The bits of stand up at the start and end of the shows was time filler.
[Comedian] is a little dull (particularly considering when it's about comedians) but there are some pretty true parts in it.
That sort of like saying a documentary about weight room workouts isn't as entertaining as a football game. Comedian, like The Aristocrats, is not a comedy. It is about the business of comedy. If you're only interested in what comedians do on stage, both these movies are dull. If you're interested in what happens before (and after) the short period of time comedians are on stage, they are not dull at all.
Quick google search, because I'm interested.
Sericol sells ink, for what looks like large photoprinting shops. Its a branch of Fujifilm. Could it be that, instead of looking at an advert, you're actually looking at the building where a branch of Sericol is located? "More than ink...solutions" is their company motto or whatever.
The commercials were almost as bad as having to program using the DirectShow API. Both must have been invented by a PHD who is so smart but actually can't do anything.
You're a software engineer and can't figure out how to uninstall unused old kernels? You don't even have to open up a configuration file. Just uncheck the kernel in synaptic. If you manage to get an internet connection make sure you update everything and get at least 8.04 (Hardy Heron). There are TONS of fixes for damn near everything on the ubuntuforums. If you are a software engineer you should REALLY be able to fix anything in ubuntu with little trouble. Not to mention you should be used to having to tinker with shit to get it to work exactly the way you want it.
Every Seinfeld episode I ever saw exploited at least one character's inablity to recognize irony in the mirror.
On reflection, you succinctly make the humor case for the Vista ads, the Seinfeld show AND Slashdot itself in a single overtly rational geek rant.
I'm awed, Dude!
Gotta go -- time to read the FA.
Guys, guys (and gals), I got it. It was all a meta-advertisement campaign. The advertising firm has to be a Linux/BSD/OS X/other non-Microsoft shop and they got asked to make ads for Vista. The pay was right, but they couldn't bring themselves to write good ads for Microsoft.
So they took advantage of the fact that Bill Gates and the rest of Microsoft's upper management are so out of touch with the common man. They made these incomprehensible ads and assured them that they wouldn't look like complete tools when Gates and Seinfeld were reading these lines. Oh, and Seinfeld. He's still popular, right? At least, as far as Microsoft knew.
Thus, they wound up with these ads only barely advertising Vista in any way, shape, or form. But that's where the advertising firm controls the game. It wasn't about Vista; we're all in here talking about the ads, not about Vista! The firm was advertising themselves ! Look how much attention they've got now for making these complete nonsense commercials! They completely faced the world's largest software company, AND they got one of the world's richest men AND Jerry Seinfeld in on the act! Hell, with credentials like that, I might hire them if I had something worth advertising!
Only, it backfired when they forgot that Microsoft probably isn't going to tell everyone who the firm was. Ah, well. Can't blame a guy for trying.
</sarcasm>
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
We had one of those for Alesse around here. It never actually said what it was for, except that it was obviously targeted at younger females. Apparently it's a form of birth-control, but I had thought it was cosmetics or something of that sort as the ads never mentioned what it's for.
but even i use any chance that i can find to piss on microsoft.
well, after all those years of suffering through their shit, my willy doesnt want to miss the chance to at least do something when they come up.
Read radical news here
I'm so glad I wasn't the only one staring at my TV, minutes after the end of that commercial, mouth agape.
This report turned out to be anti-Microsoft bullshit. Why is slashdot propagating lies? Is the McCain campaign running this site now?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Seriously, it's just a series of commercials. If it were anyone but MS this wouldn't even be on /. let alone have everyone up in arms about it.
Move along, nothing to see here...
Sericol sounds like some kind of drug.
"Sericol -- ask your doctor about it today."
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1181231
Well... non-MS/Apple OS's always seems to work best on slightly older hardware. I don't install Linux on any hardware less than a year old and not normally less than two and expect not to have issues.
Linux/BSD/Whatever-other-OS are not high priority targets for most hardware manufactures. In my experience, hardware manufactures generally take longer to produce drivers for non-MS OS's, if they produce them at all, and do significantly less updating to them. Quite a bit, the community ends up reverse engineering them, using wrappers, or using the most similar available FOSS driver.
As for wifi; Linux wifi support is, in general, bad; though this seems to be more of an issue with the hardware manufacturers rather than the OS.
[insert witty comment here]
To some extent you're not supposed to care what the company is selling, since you're probably not in the bulk ink market (or whatever they may be offering). The point of these campaigns is to put the company's name into the heads of millions of motorists, on the off chance that a small fraction happen to make purchase decisions for bulk ink (or processed squid, whatever.)
At that point the purchaser will Google for local vendors, and when faced with a list of a half-dozen unfamiliar companies along with "Sericol" -- which he will implicitly trust because he's heard of them before (somewhere) -- he'll go for the safe choice he's heard of. After all, nobody ever got fired for going with Sericol.
Is how quickly they were to turn around and cancel them... specially since the second one was better received. They were generating a lot of interest, and the intent was clearly not to sell stuff, but to portray Microsoft as out of touch but willing to listen and learn. Canceling something so drastically gives the impression Microsoft are genuinely clueless as to which direction to follow, it's not a good sign.
I think the idea behind this type of advertising is to simply make the name familiar to you.
They're not trying to get you to run out and look them up when you need 'solutions', whatever that means.
So if & when you see their company's name on a list with other vendors (when your company is getting bids for a contract), you'll feel more comfortable with them simply because their name is more familiar than the others.
OK, maybe it's because I actually didn't pay much attention to them, but they seemed consistent with Bill Gates' sense of humor. Remember the "Da da da" ad with the he and Ballmer driving around and finding a discarded SUN workstation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrwnJDQy0ic
I can't really imagine what a "good" Microsoft ad would possibly look like, so I think the WTF ads we got were kind of neat, considering they came from the former richest man in the world probably as part of some ego-stroke / lifelong dream.
Of all the things we've seen and expected from Bill Gates, I'd have to say this ranks as "cool" . Strange, but cool.
http://gizmodo.com/5051682/microsoft-ads-featuring-bill-gates-and-jerry-seinfeld-not-canceled
There is no sig...
Who are the ad geniuses that came up with this one?
Exactly. See the classic advertising campaign for Burma shave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave ) where seeing the first one really wouldn't do the brand any good at all. The Burma-Shave campaign could be considered one of the most successful of all time.
So, I think we really do have to wait and see if the ads have a payoff, but in terms of getting people's attention, they've done a brilliant job.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Except I tell them it wasn't an ad for Microsoft, but rather was an ad for American Express, Tennis Shoes, weggie free undies for middle aged men etc.
The last one is my favorite at the moment.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Random, disconnected thoughts:
Were they anyone besides Jerry and Bill, these commercials would have disappeared without fuss after America collectively went "Huh?"
I heard a comic the other night say that humor was pain + time. Bill and Jerry probably have the necessary pain, Bill with the botched Vista release (regardless of what you think of the product) and Jerry, well, he lives in New York. But I think a better equation is that humor = pain + time + learning, and I think learning might be the key missing component, and the real reason the commercials fall flat.
I'm having a hard time believing that this ad campaign was just a misstep or a failed experiment. Microsoft has the best marketing talent money can buy, surely they could have done something better with this, had they anything to work with. Could we be seeing the sunset of two institutions? Microsoft, well, we already know that story, but I'm thinking that the world may be growing tired of Jerry as well. (I mean, "the bee movie"??)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
We know one thing for sure Bill Gates himself bought off on the idea. He would have never agreed to be in front of the camera if he didn't like the idea. So with Gates giving the thumbs up to the project everyone at Microsoft was scared shit-less to say it was a bad idea. So only after it was on the air and it was so obvouisly pointless could they remove it.
I know what Gatets was thinking too. I tried being on film once too. It was fun trying to act but then I saw the result. Man was it bad. After that I decided to work only in back of the camera. I do much better there. Likely Gates saw himself on TV and thought "OMG this is bad", just like I did. So they spent $10M on it. To him that's pocket change.
He did his routine, now it's time for the next comedy act.
I thought his routine was a stinker, but then again, he didn't have good material to work with.
Yeesh, no need for the ad hominem attacks - the guy had some legitimate concerns, namely about working "out of the box."
You shouldn't need to have to rely on a search engine when installing an OS and making the basics function (especially if it's something like network connectivity - can't do much searching on google if you can't connect to the internet)
I use ubuntu myself but by no means is it absolutely trivial to get everything set up the way you like, especially with more obscure hardware configurations
- Every time an update occurs, it takes more and more space on my hard disk, and the boot screen is filled with 100 versions of linux kernels.
This seems to happen on any OS. The 100 versions is an obvious exaggeration (unless you installed every kernel available and you're using 6.06LTS) Also, why are you selecting the kernel by hand instead of letting the boot process move forward? That's not very "it just works" of you.
- It took me one week to get my wifi card to work properly with wpa, with all the incomplete/outdated documentation available. Eventually, I found, by chance, a message on a forum.
- After a kernel update, my wifi card couldn't work anymore. My card is not an alien from another planet. It is a well-known card model.
Yeah, you're probably using 6.06LTS, 7.04 through 8.04.1LTS have all been great with broadcom cards (which are the worst wifi cards known to man, even on windows). Gnome does almost all of the work for you, even prompting you to use the restricted drivers. You still have to know your WPA passphrase; maybe that's where you needed forum help?
- So I went back to the older kernel. What happened? Nautilus didn't work anymore!
I have no answer for this one. What happens when I forcibly use an older NTOSKRNL on my winxp machine? No booty computey.
- A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with 3 Gb of RAM).
Probably beagle; the bane of good sense. This one I'll agree with. Beagle must stop being auto-installed along with gnome; not everyone uses RAID5 with 3+ drives in their desktop (although I did, and I _still_ had to turn beagle off).
Guess that settles it. The defenders of these ads kept claiming "If the ad itself is being talked about, then it has been successful". (and apparently a few moderators agreed)
Apparently the people paying the bills don't agree. Getting slashdot to talk about Jerry Seinfeld isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars after all. Who knew?
And finally, updatedb can be disabled easily -- and even if it couldn't, newer Ubuntus come with a version that only does partial sweeps
By the way, does Linux have disk I/O prioritization like Vista does, and is it enabled by default?
For example, Vista indexing service also generates a LOT of disk I/O, but it runs with 'background' I/O priority, and the impact on the disk response time is not nearly as significant as running an add-on indexing service for WinXP.
Most add-on indexing services for XP (Google, Windows Desktop Search) will stop indexing if the user is using the keyboard/mouse for exactly that reason (no way to prioritize I/O).
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
I really hope someone got the axe for coming up with such an awful commercial and wasting all that money.
FUSIONSTORM
MAKING TECHNOLOGY WORK
What do they do? No fuckin' clue - I guess they're some kind of science god, and electrons wouldn't flow without their existence. Saw that ad for weeks driving to work, and at this point it's my standard example of Crappy, Useless Advertising.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Today, I awoke in Bizarro Universe - I could tell because I found a path where the Gates/Seinfeld commercials make sense.
It seems like it's part of the *marketing* plan to prop up whatever MS is going to do with Vista - or its OS future in general - Bill Gates is going to return to head Microsoft. As the commercials suggest - and cater to the mass ignorance - Bill is a genius, knows design, knows what kids want, has connected a billion people - and the problem is he's retired and out of touch.
Once you solve out of touch, you can solve retired.
Further, future news releases have Balmer stepping down due to health reasons, in the best traditions of the Soviet.
Vista will equate to Non-person, its successor to Gates - the perennial hero, the everyman, the genius that no one can live without.
Bill wiggles and computer industry convulses in rebirth. Bill has the answers to the questions. We are in dire straights with his Jupiter-sized brain locked away in his moon-like mansion orbiting above Seattle - but he is about to come back down to earth and solve all.
I think the rest of my day is going to get worse, until I awake and discover it was all a bad dream - and as I awake I'll look out my bedroom window, I'll see it burrowing into the ridge behind my house and no one will believe me - until it is all too late.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I like Windovvs Vista beckause it ise so easie to ckopie.
Instead of those pointless commercials they ran for Vista it probably would have been funnier if they had truly geeked out, having Seinfeld and Gates say take a tour of sci-fi movie sets, like go on the old Enterprise from the original Star Trek by Forrest Gumping them into old footage. Gates and Seinfeld could be sneaking around, Gates in a blue science tunic with really fake looking Vulcan ears and Jerry in red. Jerry:"Hey, why do I have to wear the red shirt? I know what happens to the guys wearing red shirts!" Gates:"Ssh!" and the trubolift doors open and they nervously sneak out onto the bridge and Gates could point out that old hooded viewer of Spock's on the bridge. Jerry:(whispering)"You know, I always wondered what he saw when he looked in that thing!" Gates:"Take a look." Jerry sidles over and peers in and sees the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death, "Uh, Houston we have a problem!" Gates looks in, sees the BSOD. "Oh no, they're still running Windows98!" and hits a button and there's the sound of MS reboot. Cut to a shot where the whole bridge crew turns to look in their direction. Gates and Seinfeld smile lamely and nervously and Gates says "Well it's not completely perfect, Hey nothing is. Besides they're still running Windows98." Stock shots of Nimoy raising an eyebrow in disapproval, Kirk doing the worried chin rub, Chekov and Sulu look at one another smiling, Uhura tweaking some buttons and hearing the AOL sound "You've got mail!" Gates:"Come on, we have to get to Engineering." One last trick matte shot of them exiting while we see the original cast in a wide shot as they leave. Of course they'd probably have had to pay through the nose for the rights to something like that, but it would have been far funnier and some self-effacement to acknowledge that Windows isn't perfect Cobble some stock shots of them in Engineering, Gates with a Vista box and Gates inserting an installer disk in the old Engineering monitor console. Jerry:"We're gonna get caught!" Gates:"Relax, it's an upgrade, they'll love it." Shot of the old engineering core, lights flicker, sputtering sounds, shot of Scotty looking alarmed or annoyed, then everything goes back to normal. Jerry scowls that they've almost been caught again. Gates:"Well this hardware is over 40 years old." Jerry:"So now what? We go install Vista on the Death Star too?" Gates:"Why would I do that? They're the bad guys." Jerry:"Oh yeah, right." Gates:"Besides, the Death Star is incompatible." Jerry:"Incompatible?" Gates:"It runs on an old Macintosh." Jerry:"Oooh!" Vista logo, fade to black. Of course I'd rather see Apple do this commercial the other way round. Or Ubuntu frankly, I'm just saying what would be funnier.
They should get the guy that did the Enron Metal Man ad. That totally made sense and sold things.
I drank what? -- Socrates
While you have a point, you also have to keep in mind that in certain industries, some of these names may be well known, and thus there is no need to introduce themselves in an advertisement.
For example, think of Coca-Cola advertisements. They don't say anything other than "Coke" and some catchy phrase. They don't need to say anything else because the brand is well known. Same thing with certain smaller companies who operate in specific markets.
If you saw a similar advertisement for "Jack Henry and Associates, Inc." touting its "processing solutions", you might not know what the hell that company is or what it does, but anyone who is in the banking field in the U.S. likely knows who they are.
I only hope that i would have been partner in that advertisement company. 300 million dollars pure money with a cost of less than 200 000 excluding Seinfeld reward.
Had to go to youtube to see the two ads...they are so bad that slashdot is doing them a huge favor to even have a story about them. What's wrong?
1) Too long
2) Nonsensical
3) Weird
4) Patronizing
5) Boring
6) Confusing
It's hard to believe that a major corporation like Microsoft could produce these...what a waste of money. Even harder to believe that these ever were released...is everyone at Microsoft a clueless moron?
According to their sources, these commercials are still a go.
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
I'm glad the ads are down.(If they are down) The Gates/Seinfeld ads reminded me too much of the Enron "Why" ads.
YIA
Duh, ink is a suspension. Sericol sells more than ink ... it sells "solutions."
They must be in the dye business.
Hasan
Microsoft partnered with the much cooler IBM, and that was all it took to have an OS monopoly.
These ads are all about Gates partnering with Seinfeld. The secret is in the partnership. Gates plays dumb while Jerry tolerates his presence.
What better way to spell out Microsoft's strategy for success than that?
Hasan
Sericol. More than ink. Solutions.
written on it. What the hell do they sell? *Do* they in fact sell ink? Do they offer "ink solutions"? (whatever the hell they are) Do they sell printing? Do they process squid? I have no bloody idea. What if I just wanted ink? Sod it. It's easier to phone someone else.
This intrigued me, so I looked them up on Google - and, while I still don't know what they actually sell, I did find an explanation for their slogan:
"More than Ink Solutions is a commitment to provide the latest in technology, technical support and training as well as business building programs all geared toward improving your bottom line."
Furthermore:
I hope that clears things up for you.
Oh yeah, Sericol. They sell solutions that get ink out of your clothes. Way more profitable than just selling the ink.
Did any one notice the comment "which was expected". The ads were intended to be bad. It was Microsoft's attempt at "Cocaine Style Marketing"; which worked. They have recieved plenty of press over the ads. No press is bad press. Trust me, I know :)
Jamey Kirby
You shouldn't need to have to rely on a search engine when installing an OS and making the basics function
Yet another case where Windows is no better -- ever try to install Windows on even moderately unusual hardware? (Consider that just about all hardware made in the last two years is "unusual" to Windows XP.)
I use ubuntu myself but by no means is it absolutely trivial to get everything set up the way you like
I'll agree with that -- but then, it's far more difficult for me to get things set up the way I like on other OSes. I'm on a Mac at the moment, due to the untimely death (or grave injury) of my work laptop, and I've got to tell you -- it's really easy to get things set up the way Steve Jobs likes. It's hard to get things set up the way I like.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I didn't say I didn't GET Seinfeld. I said I didn't get why it was such a big deal.
And I think the reason I much preferred Larry was the sundry characters were better (Paula in particular), and the show, due to where it aired, was more adult and realistic.
I *deliberately* have not looked them up - and there was no way I was going to post a link. I veto companies that do this. I shouldn't have to chase information if you're insisting on saturating me with ads, giant letters and huge billboards. So if you can't even get the basic details on the sign/advert, then I see no reason to pay a company even the 0.0001 of a cent that my page-view "could" generate them in reward for them spending thousands of pounds on NOTHING in twenty-foot-high letters.
The advertising works both ways, you know - advertise in a poor way and I will REMEMBER, AVOID and DISCOURAGE other people from using your brand/product/service. Like, oh, I don't know, this post? I have no idea of what they do or sell - but if I ever come across their name now I will deliberately veto them on the basis of their wasteful and useless advertising.
Clear as mud isn't it?
And I would hope they DID have "strategically located" centres/managers - what's the alternative? Throw darts at a map?
Ah yes, I forgot. I work for Microsoft and I'm supposed to feel awed by your dumb journal droppings. Yes.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
So Microsoft's new slogan is "Windows: Life Without Walls" ... which curiously seems to be derived from the common hacker sig around these parts, "In a world without fences and walls, who needs gates and windows?"
Perhaps it's time to start a grassroots Internet campaign for free software: "In a life without walls, who needs Windows?"
They should make one more Jerry & Bill ad. They continue walking down the street with their luggage, then cut to a new scene where they're sitting out behind 7-11 smoking a joint and eating doritos. Jerry takes a drag on the joint, turns to Bill and says, "Awww man, this is good stuff. Is this the stuff you guys were smoking when you made Vista? Gimme a sign if it's true -- munch a whole bunch of doritos at once!" Bill reaches into the bag, grabs a handfull of doritos and stuffs them all in his mouth.
By the way, does Linux have disk I/O prioritization like Vista does, and is it enabled by default?
Without even Googling, the answer is very likely yes, and no.
That is: Yes, Linux probably has disk IO prioritization, in some patches -- although it seems to have focused more on providing a saner disk IO scheduler out of the box.
And no, I doubt it's enabled by default on the source from kernel.org. But that's a nonsensical question -- there is no one "Linux". Any distro worth its salt is building its own kernel, probably patching it quite a bit. So, a better question would be "is it enabled on Ubuntu by default?"
For example, Vista indexing service also generates a LOT of disk I/O
Why does it do this?
OS X seems to be the first one to have really gotten this right, with Spotlight -- rather than trying to index the entire disk over some arbitrary interval, it simply watches the disk for changes, and updates the index in realtime.
I'm not sure how well this is supported by the various Linux desktop searches -- we have inotify and friends, but I don't know how well that scales. I'm really not sure why Ubuntu includes locate at all, as I know of no locate command that's quite this intelligent.
But it seems to me like, even if Windows has an edge here, it's doing things entirely the wrong way.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is some insightful video commentary on the whole Windows market share issue:
YouTube
It's not a rickroll, I promise. Think about that the next time you've said "we're a Windows shop" and the sound is still ringing in your ears.
Help stamp out iliturcy.