Internal Microsoft Vista SP1 Video

I’ll admit it: It’s easy to point your finger and laugh at this video. It makes the executives that thought it up seem hopelessly out of touch, and it makes corporate culture look even more despicable than the “One Bank” U2 cover did last year. Come on - Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band? “Rockin’ Our Sales”? This video is bordering on self-parody, and I can’t really blame anyone for making fun of it, but if you’re going to laugh, at least give me a chance to explain how this happened.

I should know: I’m the one who made it.

I’d made a few internal corporate videos before. Nothing big or anything; I cut my teeth on Wendy’s “Grill Skill”, but I didn’t really start getting any attention until Apple’s “Black & Blue”. That was when things really started to take off for me, but it was also when Steve Ballmer started calling me… constantly.

It was the fall of 2006, and I got a call from an unfamiliar number. I had already blocked Ballmer’s home, office and cell numbers, but this time he was calling me from a payphone.

“Rossy, baby,” he said. “I’ve got a cherry of a project for you. Our new product line is launching next-”

“I already told you, Ballmer, I’m not interested,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to watch the series premiere of some new show called Heroes.”

“We’re prepared to offer you whatever you want,” he said.

“Whatever I want?”

“Whatever you want.”

There were problems from the get-go. The budget was too small, the shooting schedule was impossible, and I’m pretty sure the guy we cast as Bruce ServicePack was a junkie (I started getting suspicious when I walked into the bathroom and there he was, shooting heroin). I said I thought the saxophone solo was gratuitous; Ballmer said it was essential to hyping up the team. I said I thought the BitLocker superhero bit was hackneyed and tired; Ballmer said he had already promised the part to his down-on-his-luck nephew.

Then there was the catering… Christ, don’t even get me started on the catering.

Ballmer fought me every inch of the way and turned the whole project into the watered-down, middle-of-the-road pile of garbage you see now. It was the first and last time I would ever work for Microsoft, but I’m not trying to dodge the bullet here. It’s my fault this video exists, and for that I sincerely apologize to all of you.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I came to own a swimming pool filled with kittens.

Caveat Emptor used to mean that if those rancid meat pies you bought at the equinox fair gave you dysentery and you died, it was your own damned fault for being a peasant during the Middle Ages. And it’s good to know corporations like Microsoft and Blue Cross Insurance are keeping that sentiment alive.

“Windows Vista capable PCs are junk.”

“I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine.”

“Even a piece of junk will qualify.”

Reasonable assessments of the bait-and-switch scheme Microsoft developed to boost their holiday sales: putting a “Windows Vista capable” sticker on low-end PCs and selling them to hapless technophobes.

The mildly surprising part is, those quotes aren’t from reviewers, but from top Microsoft executives discussing their shitty computers (many of which could only run very limited versions of Vista anyway) via internal emails.

This is an OS so crappy, “Windows Vista capable” has taken on an insulting quality, like telling someone they’re capable of wandering around with their pants around their ankles muttering to themselves and falling into piles of boxes. And some of these machines could barely do that.

The only thing that makes me not want to bring vigilante street justice down upon their heads is the fact that while they were wringing their hands and admitting “we really botched this,” Blue Cross was trying their damnedest to take coverage away from anyone who might need it at the moment and feeling no remorse whatsoever.

Blue Cross, it seems, has for years made it routine policy to send out letters to doctors with copies of a new patient’s application and the instruction to report “any condition not listed on the report that turns out to be pre-existing.” Which doesn’t sound quite as seedy as the literal translation “so hey, how can we fuck this guy?”

Because of course the reporting of even the most minor unreported condition (an unreported pregnancy qualifies, even if the patient wasn’t aware they were pregnant at the time they filled out the form) gave Blue Cross the legal grounds to wait until the person got deathly ill and then deny their coverage requests.

And getting doctors to rat on patients is a hell of a lot cheaper than taking the time to verify information, that’s for damn sure. Which is basically their defense, that they were “trying to keep costs at a minimum.” Which is like a guy who runs a drugstore replacing all the pills with tic-tacs to save on overhead.

Caveat Emptor!

The only thing that cheers me up is the fact that I now know the name of the president of the California Medical Association, and it’s Dick Frankenstein.

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When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes consumer awareness videos as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

If you’re into gaming news (and I am, in a big way), you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about the recent decision by Bungie to separate from its parent company Microsoft. Bungie, for those with lives, are the makers of Halo, the third installment of which might as well have been subtitled “you guys, please buy some Xbox 360’s already. Seriously, they’re just sitting on the shelves over here. Bill Gates is crying.”

Not that that strategy didn’t work, you consumer sheep. In fact, the first-day sales records set by Halo 3 are comparable to a major movie premiere, Harry Potter book release, or the change in Gates’ couch. Scratch that; he probably has some sort of laser couch that incinerates denominations less than thousand-dollar bills.

But even Bill Gates’ purported laser couch couldn’t generate the kind of raving, uninformed buzz that subsumed gaming forums in the weeks leading up to Bungie’s departure. Everyone who’s ever touched a Commodore 64 had their rabid opinion, the majority being that the whole thing was a hoax. Most of the responses to the guy who originally broke the story are along the lines of “you are a moron who deserves to have his life crushed out of him by an industrial press.”

The fact that all of those people were wrong isn’t especially surprising, but the resultant wave of forums posts along the lines of “no, sir, it is you who should be mercilessly killed, for I was correct” is a textbook example of how the net cheapens our very lives. Which, you know, is always good for a laugh.

So in the midst of all of this talk about nothing, what really happened? Bungie did leave Microsoft. Why? They’re not saying, although some folks have got some seemingly informed theories about the whole thing. I naturally have my own ideas:

Bungie execs came to realize that despite Microsoft’s promises, Mountain Dew: Game Fuel
still tastes like fucking Mountain Dew.

Bungie couldn’t resist the opportunity for getting thousands of knee-jerk journalists to include the phrase “Bungie Jumps” in their headlines.

They’re sick of making the same goddamned game over and over and over again so frat guys can pretend to shoot each other with rocket launchers.

It’s all to distract media from the fact that while working with Bungie on their newest project, Peter Jackson ate a level designer.

In the end, the most likely answer is that it was purely a business decision, and will allow Bungie some bargaining leverage when it comes time to split up profits form Halo 9. Even Bungie’s franchise director has said that in the foreseeable future, “day-to-day life won’t change much.” Translation: more Halo, more Microsoft soft drink tie-ins, and a hell of a lot more idiots using the internet to spout off about shit they know nothing about.

God, I love the circus.

Microsoft’s lumbering hulk of a failure, Windows Vista, is no longer your only option when purchasing a new PC. Microsoft, finally smelling the technological wet one they’ve dealt, agreed to let PC manufacturers offer XP as a “downgraded OS” to buyers.

Personally, I’ve had nothing but IT problems since I switched my home candle-making business to Vista machines, so this news comes as a real relief. No longer must I fear accidental wick reorders or tallow shortages when my vast network of computers, all dedicated to the making and documenting of candles, goes tits up.

The bad news is that this may be a limited-time-only deal. Still trying to push their aborted fetus of an OS as hard as they can, and citing a “Window’s Life-Cycle Policy,” Microsoft have said they’re going to force manufacturers to stop offering the XP option after January 31^st.

The worse news? It turns out if you paid for the Microsoft software bundle designed to downgrade your machine to XP, you totally got ripped off, since all Windows Vista user agreements entitle the buyer to a free downgrade anyway. It’s actually a brilliant marketing strategy: sell us solid waste, then after we’ve eaten it offer to turn it back into a sandwich for forty bucks.

It’s kind of like the whole New Coke fiasco, except that New Coke actually beat Coke Classic in blind taste tests, whereas if Windows Vista were a food, it would probably have a good amount of pig scrotum in it.