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Party like it’s 1995: the launch of Windows 7

Most of you reading this are probably old enough to remember the launch of Windows 95, even if that event, which took place a scant 14 years ago, seems to belong to another era. It is probably the most widely mainstream manifestation of techno-lust ever witnessed. Stories were legion of people queueing for midnight sales outside of CompUSAs, or wherever the hell people bought their software back then, or having Windows 95 barbecues and just generally getting all giddy about having a Windows that was actually usable. Probably a lot of the stories were made up, but it didn’t seem to matter; for the most part, they felt true. Hordes of people — hundreds of thousands, maybe millions — felt they were getting something new that was going to tangibly make their lives better. That doesn’t happen too often.

Anyway, whether you remember this or not, Microsoft certainly does. Every succeeding version of Windows has launched with an enormous fanfare, an attempt to demonstrate by sheer willpower that Windows is still very much a Big Deal. It’s kind of absurd when you think about it: retail sales of Windows represent only a trickle of the software’s vast currents of revenue. Most Windows installations are licensed to businesses or to computer manufacturers, and most consumers encounter a new Windows version either at work or when they bring home a new machine. It seems silly to expend so much time and money and hope — for these extravaganzas reek of a desire to impress, to delight, to awe — in order to market something that most people are simply going to buy, or otherwise acquire, anyway.

I tend to shy away from comparing Microsoft to the Borg or whatever other evil totalitarian entity strikes your fancy. But it’s hard not to look at a Windows product launch as one would look at, say, the annual pageant given on the birthday of some dictator in a banana republic. It is not enough for Microsoft to dominate, to be the single greatest presence in most people’s computing lives. They want you to love them, too. In Microsoft’s case, the desire is exacerbated by the fact that, for a time, people really did love them — back in 1995, when everyone lined up to buy what is still remembered as the most important consumer software upgrade ever.

Images of khaki-clad guys firing up the Weber must still be playing in Microsoft’s collective head, lo these many years later. How else to explain the company’s strategy for launching Windows 7? Its idea is to encourage people to host software parties, like Tupperware parties except that, presumably, the attendees will include men. Take a look at this, if you can get through it:

I frankly couldn’t. Blandness on that scale is almost beyond parody. I can’t watch that without thinking about those poor actors, hard-working folks no doubt, grateful for a shot at any high-profile gig, reading the script the night before, wondering how in god’s name to inject any kind of humanity or genuine feeling into something so anodyne. Their hearts must have sank anew on arriving at the set and seeing what appears to be a wall-mounted oven straight out of the Brady house. The only thing missing from the scene is Beaver, trotting in to grab a cookie and talk about how he can’t wait to install Windows 7 so he can use it to sync his Zune. It’s a shame Buñuel isn’t alive to see this.

Microsoft’s advertising has always been unusually revealing of the company’s culture, that peculiar brand of left-brainedness that is determined to be hip if only it could find the right algorithm for it. (People thought Jobs was being a snob when he said Microsoft had “absolutely no taste.” As usual, he was more right than most people realized.) There is something autumnal about this piece: it represents Microsoft wistfully and unashamedly reaching back into the past, trying to conjure up some lingering shred of that sunny autumn when the sun never set on Windows 95. Maybe they should look into licensing “Time Is On My Side.”

“45” What?

So iTunes is now selling “Digital 45s.” Now instead of getting simply an old favorite song, you get that song’s original b-side as well, and it only costs you … well, it costs exactly double the price of a single track. But you get nice virtual sleeve art.

I find myself wondering though: will kids too young to remember 45 records understand that the second song is supposed to suck?

Linus

Linus

This is Linus. I said goodbye to him for the last time today. My mother and I were with him and his last moments were peaceful and free of pain.

A Makeover

I’m ditching the old Nonsuchworks moniker — I got tired of the baffled looks it tended to inspire — and doing business under my own name from now on. With a new name comes a new theme. I’ll probably tweak it or find something different but similar, but a change does seem in order.

New content to come.

Torture

Having finally gotten around to reading Sam Harris‘ The End of Faith, I was surprised to discover a lengthy digression on torture as relates to the prosecution of what we still called, in those benighted days, the War on Terror.

It would be inaccurate, I think, to say that Harris stood in favor of torture as such. However, he did argue powerfully that our revulsion to torture is essentially hypocritical, extending as it does from a sort of moral blind spot. Harris’ argument is too lengthy to quote directly, so I will summarize it as fairly as I can.

  1. We are resigned to what we call in warfare “collateral damage,” meaning the unintended destruction of non-military targets and the injury and death of civilians.
  2. The toll in pain and death exacted by collateral damage is as gruesome as that of any other wartime horror: men, women and children are blinded, crippled, mutilated or killed, or suffer thirst, starvation and sickness in the wake of attacks that destroy local infrastructure and services.
  3. The pain and suffering of the collaterally damaged is, in fact, qualitatively of little to no difference to that suffered under torture.
  4. The preceding premises being true, one cannot morally object to one but not the other; anyone willing to accept collateral damage in wartime has no basis from which to declaim torture as immoral.

Harris made this argument to illustrate the limitations and biases inherent in our moral reasoning, particularly the human tendency to respond to individual suffering while remaining relatively unmoved by the suffering of a great many people. There is a component of torture — perhaps the way in which it is reducible in our imaginations to a dichotomy of victim and tormentor, the latter holding the former utterly in his power — that seems immediate and visceral. Yet Harris, while admitting even he found his own conclusions unsettling, was not simply arguing as the devil’s advocate. Those who have read The End of Faith will know that Harris has a very large axe to grind against Islamic fundamentalism; unlike most thinkers of essentially leftist bent, Harris has no compunction about denouncing Islam as a religion of ignorance, hatred and cruelty, nor does he balk at describing its war on the West in essentially neoconservative terms: that is, as a clash of civilizations, a zero-sum game in which compromise or rapprochement is out of the question.

As a person repulsed by the torture that has been carried out by my government ostensibly on my behalf, I was brought up short by Harris’ arguments. Had I been too quick to give in to my instinctive reaction of horror and outrage? How can one argue with any conviction that slamming a man’s head repeatedly into a wall is worse than, say, burning a little girl with napalm while denuding the forests surrounding her village? Is one of these things really worse than the other? Continue reading →

Coming out of the cannabis closet … all at once

Andrew Sullivan has been running a regular feature on his blog called “the cannabis closet,” in which ordinary, productive, otherwise law-abiding citizens advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana by admitting to their own use of it, thus demonstrating the possibility of using marijuana responsibly and harmlessly.

It’s a clever idea. As Sullivan and others have argued, the cultural stereotype of the marijuana user is the bearded or beaded Deadhead, a guy (or gal) who, one strongly suspects, actually hangs those centerfolds from High Times up in the garage or the basement. The first step toward sensible reform of the marijuana laws is to shatter the stereotype of the addled pot-smoking hippie, disingenuously arguing for the benefits of hemp clothing when everyone knows he really wants to be able to blaze up at the Phish concert without getting hooked by the law. I already knew pot was far more mainstream than that, but even I have been somewhat taken aback by the breadth of the testimonials Sullivan has collected so far. There are an awful lot of folks out there who demonstrate you can keep your shit together and smoke it, too.

Anyway, having been clean for many years now, I don’t have the opportunity to weigh in with my own testimony. But it got me thinking about a marvelous mass protest that would force the issue of marijuana reform on the national radar in a big way. Let me admit up front there is no way in hell this would ever happen. But as a thought experiment, it’s a honey.

According to statistics, about 12.5% of people in the U.S. smoked pot at least once in the last year. That’s roughly 38 million Americans, between the ages of 15 and 64. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the majority of those — say 35 million, roughly equal to the entire population of California — are at least semi-regular users.

Now let’s say that all of those folks picked a day. Could be April 20, could be any old day. And let’s say that, on that day, 35 million marijuana users all turned themselves into the police.

Imagine husbands and wives, grandmas and grandpas, sons and daughters; school teachers, financial advisors, lawyers and librarians; soldiers, firefighters, grocery clerks, real estate agents — hell, maybe even the occasional policeman — all rolling up to their local police station to give themselves up.

I can’t find any statistics on how many people are currently embroiled in the criminal justice system right now. From DUIs and trespassing citations up to robberies and murders, there are undoubtedly a lot of people working their way through the state and federal courts. Now imagine tossing in a few dozen million more, all copping to the same benign offense. The justice system would grind to a halt. Camera crews would record footage of lines leading out of police stations and snaking around the block. Police would be reduced to taking names and numbers and sending people home, the cases subsequently going unpursued due to “shortages of resources and manpower.” And the people watching at home would, I think, be astonished to see how many of their fellow ordinary citizens pursue this pastime, who are considered criminals under our country’s current laws.

That, I think, would change the conversation in a big hurry.