by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/11/05 08:16 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/11/05/5893669.aspx
The X-Files and others have cited the text in the personal diary of King George III from July 4, 1776
Nothing important happened today
to show that revolutions can start that will change the world forever and even kings can fail to notice.
Not the fairest possible conclusion in a world where one did not hear of either victories or defeats until long after the battle is over, but it does have an ironic edge to it.
And in truth even today things like this can happen. And we have less excuse....
In that vein, some may remember my post about the Error 2 bug with MUI entitled Do what Icon, not what I say, aka MUI is still making me bipolar.
This bug, once you hit it, would stop you from bring able to install any language pack, ever. Despite the fact that the help instructions would tell you to reboot and try again (for the 15 languages available at that time, it could literally be asking you to repeatedly download up to 2gb of information! Ick!
Anyway, that was back in August.
The other day I was running Windows Update on my Vista machines and saw that they had added a new bunch of languages. So there were now over twice as many of them available.
I panicked.
Were they going to make me try to download 4-5gb of data or more, just to fail again? No one told me any kind of fix was publicly available yet....
Turns out the world had changed (on October 23rd, 2007) and I didn't even know about it! :-)
(Nothing important happened here that day!)
You can look at MS Knowledge Base 942903, which points to both x86 and x64 versions of the fix.
Once I installed it, I was able to get all languages installed. :-)
So, if you have Vista Ultimate and you want to download language packs, then feel free to install this fix and save the Internet's bandwidth a bit....
This post brought to you by ᕯ (U+156f, a.k.a. CANADIAN SYLLABICS TTH)
# Mihai on 5 Nov 2007 1:06 PM:
<<save the Internet's bandwidth a bit....>>
And I would save even more if I could download the language packs and save them for the future :-)
Any chance of that happening?
# Maurits [MSFT] on 5 Nov 2007 1:14 PM:
Indeed, the declaration of independence was *actually* signed on July 2.
# Michael S. Kaplan on 5 Nov 2007 1:34 PM:
Congress passed it on the 4th, though :-)
# Michael S. Kaplan on 5 Nov 2007 1:37 PM:
And most of the official signing did not happen till August anyway!
# John Cowan on 5 Nov 2007 3:54 PM:
First of all, the diary entry's bogus; George didn't keep a diary at all.
As for the Declaration of Independence, the full story is that independence was actually declared by unanimous vote of the Second Continental Congress on 2 July, the actual text of the Declaration was passed by Congress and sent to the printer on 4 July, and most but not all delegates signed on 2 August (some signed later, two never signed at all). The Declaration was first published in England during August as well.
Anyhow, here is John Adams's take on Independence Day:
"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."
Not bad for my birthday!
# Michael S. Kaplan on 5 Nov 2007 4:44 PM:
Note my language -- that it was cited by several (I read on Wikipedia that it was bogus but that truth did not fit the theme fo this post!).
:-)
# Bulletmagnet on 6 Nov 2007 6:47 AM:
Perhaps you have been thinking of Louie: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REV/LOUISXVI.HTM
History has not been kind to Louis XVI ... He is painted as vain, unintelligent, and ineffectual, so clueless that on the day the Bastille was seized by revolutionaries, he wrote in his diary, "Rien," "Nothing happened."
# Maurits [MSFT] on 7 Nov 2007 11:56 AM:
On the Fourth of July note... this just hit me this morning.
There's a tradition of playing Tschaikovsky's "1812 Overture" during Fourth of July fireworks celebrations. Something about cannons.
Tschaikovsky, being Russian, wrote it to celebrate the Russian victory over Napoleon in their 1812 war.
A little closer to home... there was /another/ war in 1812, known in America as "The War of 1812". Like the Revolutionary War, it was against the British.
Two interesting things happened in the war of 1812. One: it was the first (and only) time a sitting US President led troops on a battlefield. Two: the US capital was sacked and burned.
... so...
How ironic is it that we celebrate our independence from the British by playing a piece of music composed in honor of a year when we suffered our worst military defeat... and worse yet, /at the hands of the British?/
# Michael S. Kaplan on 7 Nov 2007 12:57 PM:
Very ironic -- put it proves we appreciate irony! :-)