Quantum Rocketry

Here’s a quick paraphrase of how a typical Apple Mac ad goes:

Cut to a white background. John Hodgeman, dressed in a suit nobody’s worn since the 90′s, is on the left. Justin Long, looking like he’s about to audition for the guy in ‘Best in Show’ who met his wife when they were in adjacent Starbucks, is on the right.

Hodgeman: I’m a PC, and Windows 7 just came out.

Long: Well, I’m a Mac. Wait a minute, PC, isn’t Windows 7 a kind of Windows?

Hodgeman: Uh – you – uh – yes, Mac. I suppose so.

Long: And isn’t Windows inherently bad?

Hodgeman: I guess you’re right. That means Windows 7 is inherently bad.

I can’t begin to tell you how sick I am of these TV spots. They are just so…spiteful. They rarely ever have anything positive to say about Macs, and they never have anything substantive to say about PCs. They just say, over and over again, “Macs GOOD, PCs BAD!”

Particularly the Win7 ads. The whole campaign seems to revolve around the assertion that Windows is just bad in general, and therefore Win7 is bad. So far as I can tell, the writers and directors of these ads never laid their hands on Win7. I’ve been using it since early October, and I have yet to even press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, let alone see it crash or even bog down.

It’s really telling to compare this style of advertising to Microsoft’s Win7 ad campaign. First, they showed cute kids, unicorns, and puppies, played over glowing quotes from reviews. (Wait – you mean they showed evidence for their claims?!) Then, they showed short TV spots focusing on some new feature on Win7 and how it’s useful, presented by a normal, average-looking person. It just shows how militant Mac is, iwth their tiny minority market share.

I think this mirrors the contrast between Steve Jobs’ and Bill Gates’ characters perfectly. Apple hasn’t produced anything new in years (Apple today = OSX + iPods), while MS has been evolving new features and putting forward new services. MS has even been opening up a bit, while Apple’s business practices are all about locking their devices down to prevent anyone from doing anything that rubs their snootily discerning noses the wrong way. While Jobs is just full of vitriol at his competitors and tries to survive on hero worship from his devoted minority, Gates just doesn’t care. He’s off filling impoverished schools with computers and trying to cure AIDS in Africa.

Fortunately, one of the Discovery Channel “Boom-dee-atta” ads came on immediately thereafter and made me feel better!

Apparently a group in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate put out the following white paper. If true, I have to say I agree with it and I think it’s in line with the “Mars First” option likely to be put forward by the Augustine Commission as one of several options. Hopefully these broader, more visionary options will trump the “Save Ares” crowd.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32268

Well, at least they seem good-natured about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8226075.stm

Drew at Toothpaste for Dinner put up this comic today, which I feel compelled to share after hacking away at CSS to design my own web site:

This is because (1) Cornell decided to stop offering free web space because we can use Facebook for “personal web pages” and (2) I heard a report on NPR about how more and more companies are looking for their new hires to have web sites rather than paper resumes.