So, the “I’m a PC” Laptop Hunters commercials really, really annoy me.  The main reason is because their choppy editing and complete logical inconsistency makes the entire message of the commercial that PCs are great for indecisive consumers who want a computer that will Do Things, and the problem with Macs is Stuff.  The secondary reason is the premise of the commercials, which is as follows:

1.) Microsoft will offer you an amount of money to buy a computer that will fulfill your needs.
2.) Your needs are poorly defined, oddly inconsistent with the needs of a real person in your situation, and ultimately fulfilled by whatever’s cheap and name brand.
3.) For no apparent reason, you will leave hundreds of dollars of free money (and thus free computer) on the table just to get back at those fucking Mac bastard fucks.

Let us watch A Tale Of Two Laurens.

Lauren One is a cute, alternative redhead (she has a SCARF and a BIG PURSE and DARK FINGERNAIL POLISH and probably works at your local coffee shop and smiles at you but is not interested in you like that, but maybe, who knows?) who, if you’ll notice, walks in the Mac Store long enough for a passerby to go approximately 25 feet and be in both her entering the store and exiting the store shot.  She wants a sub-$1000 computer, but does not want the terrible Mac with the 13” screen that she never looked at.

For some reason, Lauren wants a computer with a 17” screen, but given that she ends up buying a $700 HP, I have no idea what she wants the screen for - she’s too busy fake-lamenting her lack of Mac coolness to actually say - but she gets her HP Pavillion with its big screen and its future bevy of technical issues (not a particularly big HP fan here).

Then, there’s Lauren Two.  She’s a cute, perky blonde who’s going out with mom to find a computer for law school (wholesome and smart!), and wants something small and light and portable for under $1700.  So, for some completely inexplicable reason, she goes to the larger $2,000 Mac, which is just a terrible choice.

So, Lauren Two, unable to find a Mac under $2,000, buys a 13” Dell XPS for just under $1,000.  It’s so sad that she…wait the fuck a minute.  Lauren One didn’t even go in the stupid store and still found a 13” Mac for $1,000, but Lauren Two couldn’t find the same computer despite the fact that she was verifiably standing next to Macs - THERE IS VIDEO - and looking at them.  Mom says that Lauren Two always gets what she wants, although I have to wonder how accurate that assessment is when she remains blithely ignorant of her options. 

Also, I get that the point of these commercials is that PCs are a lot more affordable, but really, if a giant soulless corporation offers you X amount of money for something, wouldn’t any rational person take X amount of money rather than saving them a few hundred dollars? 

This, in a nutshell, is why I hate these ads.  It’s people (well, actors) basically shopping for some random set of specifications solely for the purpose of not buying the competitor product.  It’s like having someone wander around a Toyota dealership, fruitlessly searching for a sub-$15,000 sedan with a four-letter name before finding out that the only car which satisfies such a pressing need is the Chevy Aveo. 

I made this mistake of watching this terrible video, and without forcing you to watch it, there’s apparently a new idea that net neutrality is a way of regulating conservatism on the Internet out of existence. 

I’m too tired to even research exactly how this came to be, but if you can explain it in comments, please do.  I just wish Obama would get around to using the massive power of the federal government to hunt down and silence conservative bloggers, already.  We’re more than two months in, and my most pressing wishes have not been fulfilled.

I hate to be the one to point this out to the party of Twitter, but I think Nielsen doesn’t measure people who watch things online. 

My other revelation from the Land Past Tomorrow: they sell eggs that make your feet smooth!

Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter feed is a thing of terrible beauty, like a fresh lilac, standing in the midst of a raging fire.

Or MCDONALDS FRIES UM UM UM. 

I agree with Ezra—-this article about trolling doesn’t really give a lot of insight into what drives the trolls on political blogs, which is a disappointment.  I can’t but think that right wingers who relentlessly troll and obsess over liberal blogs—-especially those written by members of hated races, or who are female or gay—-are motivated by the same weird obsessive energy that leads people to join the KKK.  People who must have so little personality or life of their own that they make hating other people the focus of their energies.  I’m not talking about light amounts of trolling, which can be a fun way to spend an hour.  I’m talking about the non-stop relentless obsession that captures a certain kind of middle class white guy, that eats up hours of his day trolling and fuming that his perceived inferiors are permitted access to society. 

Still, it’s an interesting read, and sheds a lot of light on those assholes who go beyond light trolling and really use it to hurt people, all while pretending that they’re somehow noble heroes because they’re “exposing” that people take themselves too seriously.  These are the guys who can’t (or won’t) tell the difference between showing up at a forum where people take themselves too seriously and making fun of them in comments for an hour and actively harassing people, setting up fake blogs mocking dead teenagers, floating fake resumes for hated people like Kathy Sierra, racist and sexist slurs, and getting people fired.  Or really, even the difference between puncturing a few illusions and destroying property in Second Life—-yes, people take that game a little too seriously, but what are you proving by ruining hours of labor they’ve put into their harmless hobby?  As expected, hardcore trolls (of the sort who get people to call the homes of parents whose kids have suicides documented online or who spend hours on rape fantasies or porn doctored to humiliate women they perceive as too uppity) are either sociopaths or people with severe emotional problems.

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I’m clearly not in the habit of trying to help the opposition, but I just received a wonderful bit of news in my inbox that might be of use to the John McCain campaign.

SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment), the world’s oldest and largest non-profit agency dedicated to serving and advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors, has opened the first-ever fully-equipped Cyber Center for LGBT Seniors. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in NYC on July 15 at SAGE’s offices.

I’m sure a few well-connected Log Cabin Republican friends can make a few calls to SAGE to get the heterosexual Arizona senator into one of the classes to help him learn how to cut on the computer and do a little web surfing to show younger voters that he “gets it” with The Google and the Internets.

“Our LGBT Senior Cyber Center has been a dream for SAGE for years because we know that computers and the internet are a great way for older people to stay connected to each other and the community, and that’s what SAGE is all about,” said Michael Adams, Executive Director of SAGE.

The SAGE Cyber Center hosted classes that afternoon. Classes for beginners are being offered, two times a week, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 4:00 and 5:30pm by Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) for ten weeks. They will teach users how to operate the mouse and keyboard, as well as navigate Windows, the Internet and e-mail.

The proof is in the pudding—the GOP nom will actually get a chance to work with gay youth in this program - what a bonus in terms of outreach!

Classes began earlier this year in intergenerational collaboration between SAGE, OATS, and the LGBT Community Center’s Youth Enrichment Services (YES) program, in which youth acted as instructional assistants, providing some hands-on support to the seniors as the instructor takes them through the class.

I also received word from a rep that SAGE has an “amazing transgender woman who is a trainer - it would be a good learning experience for McCain in

MANY

ways...”

If folks at the McCain campaign are reading this post, here’s the 411—to register for classes, he should contact Doreen Bermudez at 212-741-2247 x242. Or the Arizona senator may just want to do a nice photo op at the SAGE Cyber Center for LGBT Seniors to show he’s

down with technology and TEH GAYZ

in one fell swoop, since his LCR allies have been promising us that we’re going to be educated about why LGBTs should be pro-McCain.

SAGE
305 7th Avenue
6th Floor
New York, NY 10001
t: (212) 741-2247
f: (212) 366-1947
info@sageusa.org
http://www.sageusa.org/
For media inquiries, contact Cathy Renna (917-757-6123) or Simon Aronoff (202-510-6705) at Renna Communications. They’ll be happy to help the “seasoned citizen” at the top of the GOP ticket make the most of the photo op and training session.

Related:
* Blend McCain posts
* G*d damn. Can we afford a computer illiterate doofus as POTUS?

That paying $1.6 billion for a business with essentially no revenue stream might lead to difficulties? It’s not like we’ve ever seen anything like that before - especially not involving the internet.

Update: Okay, “essentially no” is probably too strong a descriptor. “Tenuous and difficult to expand” is more like it. Plus, no matter how bad YouTube’s revenue model is, at least it’s not as bad as this.

People close to the company’s finances say most of the retailer’s earnings came in the form of one-time so-called “tenant improvement” payments from landlords of $2 million to $7 million per store.

Via Atrios.

I got all excited when I saw Farhad Manjoo had a review up of something called the Smart ForTwo, which is a backseat-less small car that can fit into even the scariest small parallel parking spots.  “Ah-a!,” I thought, “People are beginning to wise up to a frustration that drove me out of driving and into bicycling, which is the clusterfuck nature of traffic and parking makes driving just plain miserable.”  Plus, I have a pick-up truck, so I’m already convinced that a lot of people need no more than two seats.  This Smart Fortwo actually has more storage space for luggage and groceries than my truck does without using the truckbed, something you often don’t want to do with something like a suitcase.  But the fact of the matter is most cars out there are taking up a lot more physical space than the owners pretty much ever need—-backseats that never touch a human butt, giant truckbeds that never haul a piece of furniture or a bag of compost.  Massive engines that never get put to use hauling anything more than human beings.  My annoyance at this trend far outstrips my environmental concerns.  On a certain level, it’s also symbolic of the wastefulness of American life.  I’m also easily annoyed by houses that have tons of square footage and the owners have to start being creative about filling it.  I wish the sleeker, smaller trend in computers would spread out to other aspects of American life, but so far, big and garish seems like it’s here to stay.  So any move in the right direction—-prioritizing the compact, the simple, the maneuverable, the economical over the garish, the wasteful, and imposing—-gets me all excited.

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Sure, Avril Lavigne may be about to take over the most watched YouTube video spot of all time, but the real question is how this became number one. It’s like the video that your sheltered cousins watch to prove they actually do watch shit on the internet.

Consider this your random YouTube video thread. 

I ante with Powerthirst:

Passenger rail won’t ever replace the airline industry.  That’s because the point is to supplant long distance car travel.  Where passenger rail really looks great is in the Rust Belt, where you have several large urban areas between two and five hours apart from each other from Illinois to Pennsylvania.  Personally, I would have killed the last few years if I could have traveled from Columbus to Cleveland or Cincinnati without putting 300 miles on my car each time. 

Also, this is so wrong, yet so, so right.

So, I’m considering purchasing Metal Gear Solid 4 today as my summer game (I generally try to buy one game every three months or so, and with law school starting, this is probably going to be my last game for a while).

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Sorry to bring up this guy again, but this is the living end. After posting about McSame’s idiotic reference to his campaign using “a Google” to vet his VP candidates, I come across this video (from early on in GOP primary) that I hadn’t seen. If anything should disqualify a person from leading us into the future, it should be this level of computer illiteracy. Voters, meet unashamed Luddite John McCain.

Interviewer: Are you a Mac or a PC user?
McCain: Neither. I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance that I can get.

There are plenty of “seasoned” citizens out there who surf the web and know how to use email, so he doesn’t get a pass for playing the crusty old coot card. There is zero excuse for John McCain to be completely helpless at the keyboard. If he cannot grasp the basic concept of email, the Internet, blogs or even a word processor on his own, we know the man is living in the past. You cannot delegate out knowledge about 21st century communication and technology that you would need to make critical decisions about the direction you want to take this country in, and how to protect and secure it in the digital age. Completely unacceptable.