A twist on the Mojave Experiment

“The Mojave Experiment.”  Sounds like science fiction.  Like the Manhattan Project.  But with lasers.

Does anyone remember more innocent times (a couple of months ago) when Microsoft was still trying to get you believe that Vista was a consumer perception problem and not a debacle?  Their sleight-of-hand marketing campaign that boiled down to, “It’s not us, it’s you.”  There’s a reason it doesn’t work in break-ups and a reason that doesn’t work with multi-million dollar ad campaigns.  The results of that experiment were so conclusive and reassuring that they promptly decided to release a brand new OS ASAP.  Why didn’t they use this experiment on their own execs?

Well, some cheeky bastards at ZDNet Australia have taken this experiment and turned it on its head.  Or done an orthogonal experiment.  Or made a perpendicular point.  Here’s the video (in flash on their site).  If only WordPress would let me directly embed their video.

Now, I’m sure this will fuel the fire that “KDE just just copying the look and feel or Windows” or vice versa.  But can we just set that aside and appreciate for a moment a clever concept with a Top Notch ™ dream sequence effect?  Thanks for the tip.

UPDATE: Slashdot has this story on their front page now.  Thanks again to Renai LeMay of ZDNet for giving me the scoop on their article.

UPDATE2: Now on Gizmodo.