I don't think some actor posing as a breaking and entering lunatic nutball should have the power to influence changes which affect every lunatic nutball that still uses America OnLine. Still, a recent advertisement features just such a person storming the AOL boardroom, stepping onto their table, and initiate subtly hinting at them (as subtle as one can be whilst standing on a table). "Gee, it'd sure be nice if I could see what my kids are doing online and maybe get a uhhh, i don't know report card showing what websites they visit..." It should be notated that the woman carries a child which looks to be no greater than four years old.
Situation 1: Brainrobbed table hint woman (henceforth referred to as Grilbik) sincerely worries this near-baby will be killed if exposed to AOL, but it must be exposed to AOL, because all the kids on tv use computers and AOL is the only thing computers are good for. But if you, Grilbik, are willing to venture through acid pools and mine fields, past heavily armed soldiers and gold robots to meet the AOL mopes in their own domain, all while you're holding this child out in front of you, I don't think it's going to be a stray nipple that ultimately does the poor sap in.
Situation 2: Perhaps it will be revealed that Grilbik actually worries about another older child she dispensed, one which I can only assume has been left unsupervised in front of a pipebomb enthusiast chatroom while the trip is being made. As a keeper of surplus shame, I know that there are reasons to want privacy besides sinister plots. Sometimes you just want to do things that either look strange or would require lengthly explanations. However, if there are kids who don't worry about you seeing them looking at nickjr.com or the Veggie Tales homepage, then they're either buying drugs when you leave the room or too dumb to deserve the internet. Stop them before they do something that will perennially embarrass them from the safety of the google search cache in the event they one day become less stupid but have grown attached to their alias.

Shaskrieg, I'm not even halfway done. But anyway. As an example to elaborate on the privacy issue, I tell you that I convinced myself I needed a picture of Bicentennial Man not long ago, but if anyone else had been present while I obtained it, I would have had to intermittently fabricate laughter so that the potential voyuear would not assume I was merely a fan of Bicentennial Man. I know I wouldn't want my parents watching that (Bicentennial Man or me searching for pictures), and I certainly don't want AOL watching me and then telling them about it, because I can't tell AOL I don't like Bicentennial Man. Even if I did like it I wouldn't want them to know. But If this information absolutely must be reported, do not call the report a "report card." It won't be presented on a card (if it was that too would be silly and worthy of criticism), so I know they're only calling it that because it regards children, who get things called report cards from the schools they all have to attend. But school is not their whole life, and America OnLine is not school, so it's scarcely relevant to anything but America OnLine trying to pass itself off as some thoroughly trained, state appointed, trustworthy authority figure which knows what's right for people, and... that any consumer buys into that multi-talented lie shames me as a human. And that's saying something significant, considering that I made this.

The negligent Grilbik also demanded that "spam" and pop-up ads be blocked. However, Ayol has already been claiming to block unwanted spam (both kinds) for years. Is this latest display equivelant to an admission that they were lying before, or instead that someone accidentally deflipped the "block spam" switch one day and knew but didn't feel like putting it back? In the advertisement the whole cowardly bunch agree to do the blocking without any surprise or objection. You'd expect one of them to at least display a oh, fraggle, I forgot to block the spam today, what's wrong with me" expression, but we don't even get that. They have no shame. They're perfectly welcome to some of mine.


While it's nice to have pop-up advertising blocked, still I find worrisome the Grilbik's insistence that this process occur "...without me having to do anything." Me, myself, I get mad enough to eat beets just when a program I install puts an icon on the desktop screen. I want at least an illusion of command over this machine. I don't have a problem with pop-uppery being blocked, but if Amelica OnLine will do this without saying so, what else might it be doing?
Hmmm, this webpage says things that might anger, bore, or otherwise upset user. It is within my program to truncate.
Maybe even
Animated gifs are tacky. I cannot allow myself to display such a webpage while user is looking. I'll just make up some random error and pout.

Server Hangup

I think people should be allowed to control whether they get control or not. I'm nearer to sane than the last person to do so, so I too will address the Ayatola executives: Hey, you. If someone calls your technical support line claiming to be "confused" by the notion of choosing to not be allowed to choose, trace the call, find the address, and steal their telephone(s). Once the skills necessary to determine why they cannot make calls develop, the complainers should be more than smart enough to click the "deprive me" box.

In another advertisement (when will it stop?), America online (henceforth referred to as Belindi) openly mocks its users by depicting "all of them" as being dumb enough to mob outside the main fortress, waiting patiently and non-violently to give "ideas to make the internet better" under the foolish assumption that Belindi management created and controls the internet. These will not, cannot be carried out, because Belindi makes neither the web-sites nor the tools to browse them with. Only a couple of dubious filters. Thankfully, those shown obviously are not real subscribers. If they were, an assemblage of that many outside the stronghold would surely be carrying torches and throwing rocks (wait... why am I thankful?). Also of questionable believability is Belindi's claim that users' suggestions and comments are important to them. If this were true, why did all those people come in person instead of utilizing one of the technical support forms or e-mail addresses? Not because they were satisfied with the response, I can tell you. The response was, eerieness, that user's suggestions and comments are important to Belindi.

Once again, a thing they've never not said. Maybe it's a majority thing. Perhaps 66% of suggestions say "please ignore suggestions from smart people." That's uncharacteristically devious and clever for dumb people.

I'm surprised how little computer people actually know about the products they're trying to sell. There's another for some dsl internet providier, in which perhaps the least interesting looking characterI've ever seen is using the internet, at what appears to be the "56k dial up internet" homepage, because these words occupy the upper 25% of the screen. I used NetZero once for about a week back when it was free, and their indomitable ad-monolith didn't take up that much room. So the aryan gnome types in "Great Wall of China," capitalized, and, rather than any search results being displayed, immediately a download starts. A very slow download. You know, my reception's not so good on this channel, maybe I missed the part where he alt-tabs to check on the N64 rom site he's leeching. After letting out a few of the sort of frustration noises you only make when you want someone else to hate you, the twerp becomes a generic superhero somehow and runs to China in three seconds without bumping into anyone, takes a single photograph of an actual replication of the great wall of China and then says something like "yeah" or "right on" or "check it out, dude." I'm not concerned with the movie tie in at the moment, but rather the single photograph part. That means I'm actually supposed to believe that's what the intent of his internet use was.
Complaint 1'Ey. I have a dial-up connection, one which routinely functions at less than half its capabilities, and I upload photographs, plural, with great frequency, perhaps even more than I should. One of them would display in reasonable time, I like to think, if I ever used so few.
Complaint 2 No search engine is smart enough to know you want photographs, let alone find them and also have them be the ones you want. Now, I had assumed, quite wrongly, it seems, that in order to make computer animation you must know how to operate a computer, but anyone who knew would not have only come to know that through using one, and anyone who had used one would not have attempted to pass off such an animation as a depiction of a thing which might actually happen. The only other conclusion I can reach is that it's the character who's a twit. I don't have a problem with concluding that, except that doesn't sell a product, so I unfortunately must blame intent again. It's not easy blaming intent, especially with Winter coming up.

He probably tried to download some stupid crippleware mahjong game demo called "great wall" or had twenty other windows open simultaneously processing various putrid RealVideo files. And then he has the gall to say "we need a wayyy faster connection!" no you don't, you need a wayyy more effective central processing unit, you digital dipwit. I'd call you dopish as well, but I have too little negative respect for dopes. Hey, Elroy Jetson looking twunk, you need to organize your priorities, read web pages before clicking on stuff, and give your hard working modem the credit it deserves. Only then may you hope to achieve the prestige and gracious treatment that come with being a dope.

And... I think we're done here.

Where's the exit?