Yes, I am physically located in Japan, and that was obvious if you bothered
to look at my headers. However, frankly speaking (my most frequent sin),
your post mostly shows that you have no understanding of the actual
technical issues involved in internationalization, and you do come off
sounding like an enthusiastic but unknowledgeable "shill for Microsoft". If
you have nothing substantive to say, it is often best to say that--nothing.
Has Microsoft required that all posts be answered? Sorry, but a useless
answer is no better than no answer--and often worse.
With regards to cookies, certain sites do use that technique to store
language preference information. However, that is NOT the technique
Microsoft recommends. When the cookie-based technique is being used, the
user's explicit preference will be stored, either in the local cookie or in
a server-side database indexed to the local cookie. If I had ever expressed
a preference to be stored, that preference would have been for English, and
if such a cookie-based preference ever existed, their Web site should still
respect it.
However, as it is actually supposed to work, IE's language preference
information (Tools menu/Internet Options/Language button) is sent to the
server with the HTTP requests. The server is supposed to go down that list
and match the browser's highest preference for which the appropriate
language pages are available. Those are the pages which should be sent, and
it is certainly the case that English pages exist. It is also certain that
both relevant English options exist in my IE and both have higher priority
than Japanese. However, I still see only Japanese.
As noted earlier, I think there are two primary possibilities. The less
likely is that Microsoft has left that functionality out of the new version
of WindowsUpdate. That seems bizarre, but Microsoft has sometimes done
things like that. At this point, I feel like it's part of their
calcification resulting from their lack of competition (= abuse of their
monopoly). They sometimes quietly remove features so they can noisily
announce them as "new" features in later versions.
The more likely possibility is that this new version of WindowsUpdate has
language-specific problems, so they are using the code page or other
environment settings rather than paying attention to the user's browser
preferences. Of course this also greatly simplifies the amount of testing
and debugging they have to do, and if you don't like it, well, maybe you
should switch to a different OS. (Oh, your company is stuck with Microsoft,
too?)
Yes, my negative attitude is showing again. My employer is stuck with
Microsoft because our customers are stuck with Microsoft. Where competitive
options exist, I often use them--at least until Microsoft targets and
destroys the competition using all the massive leverage at their disposal.
As for you MVPs... Well, a bit of history. The MVP program was quite helpful
some years ago. Many knowledgeable MVPs were providing highly responsive and
effective free support via this server. Microsoft responded by announcing
the elimination of the MVP program, but the public uproar was so violent
that they quickly changed their mind--in public. Looking at the current crop
of MVPs, Microsoft apparently then decided on a secret plan to destroy the
utility of MVP program. Quite easy to recruit the good MVPs for other
projects or just discourage them until they go away, while retaining and
recruiting non-helpful shills. The most important goal for Microsoft is
always money, and "high quality free support" (which WAS available in the
newsgroups) is anathema. Microsoft will gladly *SELL* you as much support as
you or your company can afford.
PA Bear <> wrote:
> One thing wasn't clear in your post: Are you in Japan when you go
> to Windows Update, using this Japanese version of WinXP? Cookies
> play a very big role in the language displayed when you access any
> MS site. Knowing where you are physically would have been helpful.
> Sorry my CrystalBall© wasn't working very well.
>
> While no MVP is a rep or shill for Microsoft, I can tell you that
> the new V5 Windows Update engine is very new and I would assume
> there are some bugs to be ironed out when it comes to international
> versions of WinXP, Shannon. Another poster is having similar
> problems with his Dutch version, connecting from the Netherlands,
> so you are not alone.
>
> You can contact MS about this via the following link. While you
> may not receive a personal response, the Windows Update team *will*
> see your message:
>
> MS Product Feedback
> http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
>
<older context snipped to conserve network resources>
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