I get the impression that the Windows 7 launch is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend suddenly show up on your doorstep wanting to get back together. She's had some work done, apparently: stomach stapling to take off some of the weight, breast augmentation, and a radical nosejob to make her look as much like your current girlfriend as medical science will allow.

She's pretty, of course, almost too pretty. She still wears far too much makeup and carries that desperate look in her eyes. The fragrant haze around her is the perfume she overuses to mask the scent of failure.

But standing there in that low-cut top, you'd almost forget for a moment what a psycho she was- how she used to shut down in the middle of a date and forget everything you were talking about and how she was only happy when you were buying her things. You'd almost forget about carrying around her legacy baggage or those nights when, for seemingly no reason at all, she would simply stop speaking to you and when you asked what was wrong she'd just spit a string of hex code at you and expect you to figure it out.

You complained about her for years before finally deciding to get rid of her, and here she is again. Though, somehow she seems like a completely different person now.

"I'm up here," she says when she catches you staring at her chest.

Tempted though you may be, you know that over time she'll get bored and slow down on you just like she always does. And then you'll be right back where you started: trapped. She keeps you by convincing you that you don't have a choice. You're just not smart enough for one option or rich enough to afford the other.

"But I'm different now," she says, batting her eyes innocently. "I've changed."

Indeed she has. Apparently, she's really into Cabala now or something like that. It's helped her discover loads of untapped potential in herself. But it also means that you'll have to buy all new furniture to fit with her understanding of feng shui. That's not the only change she has in store for you. The minute you let her move in, she'll have a new alarm system put in that succeeds only in preventing your friends from coming over on poker night.

She doesn't love you, but she doesn't hate you, either. The truth is that she couldn't care less one way or the other. She's here because she doesn't want to be alone. Like all human beings, especially those well past their prime, she wants to feel wanted and, after a string of lost jobs and bad investments, she needs a place to stay.

But all in all, she's OK. She's a seven. She'll do, I guess.

After spending a month diving into the iPhone SDK and re-learning C NOW you tell me that I can make iPhone apps with Flash?

Will iPhone apps built in Flash still feature Flash's terrible bitmap scaling and rotation? Will it still allow for sloppy (and dangerous) typing and memory operations? Probably not, I suppose. Still, I can't see myself developing in Flash (or .net for that matter) just because it's more familiar. Tools for jobs. If I want to make a game for the web, I'll use Flash. If I want to make an iPhone app, I'll use X-Code thanks very much.

Did it seem like (after years of hype) Cameron made a simultaneous remake of Ferngully and Starship toopers? I still have hope that the movie will be better than the trailer, but you never know.

Here's an annotated version of the trailer to illustrate the point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRTrWsKPKh8

Special upgrade package just for disgruntled Vista Users

Windows 7: Fool Me Twice Edition(tm)

Duke's tombstone

Microsoft's new advertising push is focused on something they call the "Apple Tax," the notion that the relative cost differential between PC's and Macintosh computers amounts to an unfair surcharge for their products.

Apparently, the company's marketing wizards have surmised that after a quarter century of personal computing, no one has ever bothered to look from one price tag to another to notice that Macs cost more. And who can blame them? Consumers are busy people. Microsoft knows that, which is why they hired actors to do the comparison shopping for them.

For example, someone could buy a Vista-powered laptop for $1200 that would operate at full speed for about ten months before clogging up with registry errors, worms, and a tangled mesh of incompatible third party software and drivers. On the other hand, that same person could pay up to $200 MORE for a laptop that, according to customer feedback, works trouble-free for several years.

As you can see, the numbers just don't add up in Apple's favor- especially if you completely ignore issues like stability and reliability, which Microsoft has for decades.

What Apple doesn't want people to know is that Microsoft's Vista is a fantastic operating system for people who don't know much about computers and don't plan on using them very much.

In some sense, it comes down to temperament.

Mac users, it seems, just aren't cut out for the PC life. They're type-A personalities who push the power button and expect things to happen. For whatever reason, these special snowflakes seem to think that they feel they deserve a working computer just because they paid for it. They run several memory-intensive apps at the same time and when something does go wrong, it's such a rare occurrence that the spoiled brats actually have the temerity to get upset about it.

On those occasions, they flood Apple with complaints and demands that the company improve their products- as if they're special or something. Imagine how expensive PCs would be if Microsoft had to constantly tweak their products for better security and usability. Ridiculous, I know. That's why PC customers are lucky that Microsoft made the decision long ago to forego these areas and pass the savings onto users who would then, in turn, pass that money onto anti-virus companies.

A PC, on the other hand, teaches you how to take life as it comes, to roll with the never-ending series of punches that life, and this sparking metal and plastic brick in your den, have thrown your way. There's something very Zen about the PC user experience. When you encounter a catastrophic crash and lose your family photos, you blame yourself for not backing up regularly enough. When you re-install the OS for the third time in a year you completely understand when tech support informs you that you need to buy a whole new license or a new computer. You learn acceptance.

Buying a dogmeat-cheap PC is penny wise. You've suspected this all along, and thanks to Microsoft's new ad campaign, now everybody knows it. If your expectations and self-esteem are low enough, perhaps you too can be a PC.

A decade ago, the world danced to Microsoft's wonky, arhythmic tune. These days it's almost as if the company's business model is built around becoming Apple Computer- only from two or three years earlier.

Here's a more detailed account:

http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=2263

I had the bush shoe-throwing game up the same day it happened:

http://ridiculopathy.com/crappy_flash_games.php?gamename=bushoes

The response basically broke my crappy comments system.

The Sarah Palin thing was earlier with awful production values and no taste or tact at all.

http://ridiculopathy.com/crappy_flash_games.php?gamename=sarah