A stupid ad for the Kindle

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:23 pm

There's an ad for Amazon.Com's Kindle electronic book reader in which a guy and a very attractive lady in a revealing swim suit are near a pool, and he starts chatting her up by asking her how she can read the display on her device when they're in bright sunlight. I think he was also using an eBook at the same time.

Her response is that "It's a Kindle" and that it's "Only $139." Also that her sunglasses cost more.

The guy doesn't call her out on this bullshit, probably because he's trying to think of a way to pick up this broad and bang her, but if it was me, my remark might have been something lke Bruce Willis in Die Hard when the radio operator at the police department tells him after he reports on a CB radio that terrorists have taken over his building, that Channel 9 is only for emergency reports.

"No fuckin' shit lady! Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?!"

I think that comment fits here, because he wasn't asking how to buy it, he wanted to know why it worked there. Although I might not have been quite that nasty, she did look quite attractive.

This is stupid. He didn't ask her what it was or how much it costs, he asked her how she can use it in bright sunlight. Maybe she looked at the guy, wasn't interested or wasn't interested now. But it doesn't answer his question.

Is it backlit, is it specially set up, does it do something different? Or maybe he should have asked her what book she was reading. I'm not sure, I can see how you'd use other angles on some woman you're trying to seduce - in the classic sense, to pick her up in order to get laid - and a straight question on the device she's using might not show enough interest in her that she dismissed it because it wasn't indicating he wanted to get her swimsuit off (in the privacy of a room, of course.)

It was basically a bullshit answer that doesn't even respond to what he asked. And she wasn't even a blonde; she was dark haired so she doesn't even have the excuse of being a ditzy blond.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 4:00 pm

Over analyzing television commercials can lead to insanity. It makes you realize just how dumb the advertisers think we are.

I've seen that commercial, although I haven't heard it. I tend to mute the box as soon as the commercials start. I knew it was something about reading glare by the way he had to hold his hand over his laptop and she didn't.

I wait for the day all the laptops have the e-ink screens.

THE
STICK THIS IN YOUR NOOK, LADY
AARDVARK

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:20 pm

They used to. Well, they were called Etch-A-Sketches back then, but still ...

I've seen the commercial too and I actually thought it was pretty realistic. I sold my Kindle to my co-worker, who gave it to his pretty-hot wife for Valentine's Day last year. I don't know how often she reads by the poolside with it, but I'm sure if someone were to ask her "how are you able to read that in bright sunlight?" she would probably shrug and say, "um, it's a Kindle?" I doubt very seriously that she would break into a dissertation regarding the pro's and con's of eInk technology.

The thing that makes me laugh about that commercial is, not once in my life have I ever wished I could read something poolside. I paid $359 for my Kindle originally, so if someone asked me a question at the pool about it my response would be "YOU BETTER NOT GET THIS THING WET ASSHOLE, IT COST $359!!!"

Where *I* tend to read is late at night, either in bed or on the couch after the lights are out. There's no Kindle commercial for that though because mine was impossible to read in low/no-light situations. The iPad, however, does just fine in the dark. In fact, unless you use the electronic dimmer, it's almost too bright. It's like the light of Jesus Christ, emanating from the heavenly iPad into your face. It'll blind you with goodness, it will.

Here's the commercial I would have made. A guy approaches a girl at the pool, looks over her shoulder and says, "Wow, how on Earth did you manage to mangle that fucking PDF so bad? I mean, the images are all messed up, the pages are out of order, and it's completely unsearchable!" Then the woman would respond: "It's a Kindle. It's $139." Then it would fade to black and white text would appear and say, "iPad. It's no Kindle." Aaaaand, cut.

If they really wanted to go for advantages, they should talk about the Kindle's battery life, and it's lifetime free 3G access. The Kindle's battery life is amazing; I charged mine once or twice a month, tops. (The iPad makes it one or two days at a time between refills.) And, the Kindle comes with a lifetime free 3G account; iPad users are shelling out $30/month for Internet access. But as for promoting the Kindle's screen ... there's no way 16 shades of gray is going to give any technophile a boner.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:34 pm

I would have just started shoving my dick into everyone involved in that commerical - the girl, the guy, the pool, the Kindle. And then I would have told them all that they got a hundred and thirty-nine dollars worth of fucken.

** NOTE I have not yet seen the original commercial.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:31 am

I used to be "that guy", whenever someone said "Does anyone know anything about x?", I would Google it and give them the link of results and be like BOOYAH.

And now I'm that guy that, whenever someone says, "I've never seen x!", I pull it up on Youtube. I'm batting 1,000 too. Pretty much everything is there.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Booyah.

[youtube][/youtube][/youtube]

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 8:23 pm

Yeah, that was very risky to shoot the commercial there; the only thing that ought to be getting wet in that piece is... was... er, well. Huh. What a time to dra- the girl

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 10:54 pm

Well, this is frustrating. In April, it will be five years of working on the same text game. I tend to not play games or do much reading-of-fiction when I am working on a project because I don't want to rip anyone off.

That's a long goddamn time to not be reading. I mean, I read every day, but I mean in terms of proper books.

I have way too much crap as it is, so the technology of eBooks work great for me. But:

Kindle pros:
- Cheap
- Thin
- Runs forever

Kindle negatives:
- Doesn't work in the dark
- I mean, someone, probably even Amazon, is making a backlit, color Kindle at some point.

I miss reading. :(

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:06 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I would have just started shoving my dick into everyone involved in that commerical - the girl, the guy, the pool, the Kindle. And then I would have told them all that they got a hundred and thirty-nine dollars worth of fucken.

Oh, that's too funny! But you're slacking off, Jonsey, you missed her sunglasses or the plants!

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:38 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Kindle negatives:

- Absolutely horrible at reading PDF files. I mean, horrible.

It's one of those things where you have to ask yourself, what do you plan on reading? If you plan on buying all your books through Amazon (Kindle) or Barnes and Noble (Nook), then those are the devices for you -- especially if you're a fiction reader.

If you download and want to read PDFs on the go -- and I do -- then those devices are not for you. Right now, the iPad is the device for that, and I suspect in a year there will be half a dozen decent Android tablets that will do it well as well, and probably more inexpensively.

Reading PDFs on the Kindle reminded me of the days back when, to connect to the WWW, you had to dial up to your ISP with one program, then launch Trumpet Winsock to enable TCP/IP, then launch your Internet tools ... I mean, even at the time I remember thinking, "in about two years this is going to seem really archaic and we're all going to be laughing about it." And when I tried reading PDFs on the Kindle, that's how I thought. You can either spend all your time converting them into semi-readable documents, or you can view them on that shrunken-black-and-white screen and struggle with the text. It's just not built for it.

Even text-only PDFs can be difficult to read on it. Forget about books with lots of pictures, diagrams, or unique layouts.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:27 pm

Well look, admittedly I don't know how to raed

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:10 pm

My Kindle review, so far:

It showed up Friday. BITCHEN. So I had it for the trip I took to western Nebraska for a wedding.

I read a little Friday night. I never actually finished David Wong's "John Dies At The End" because I misplaced the copy I had of it. Or - wait. I THINK he posted it, free, to a website at one point. And I was reading it through "breaks" I took at an old job. And then I forgot that I was in the middle of reading a novel, and that was that. But I loved it, so I purchased it, and grabbed a few $0.99 things, like Jekyl & Hyde and probably some Lovecraft.

The version of the Kindle I have has this awful screensaver. I instantly hated it and the world that could conceive it. It's a repugnant idea, and one of those things computer people (meaning, people who have used a computer) (meaning everyone here) can instantly recognize as a shitty idea. Lemme explain.

It's got a power button, but the button slides. (I hate that, too, but whatever.) So I slide the thing to turn it off, and it puts up a picture of Jane Austin or Jane Eyre or Jane Goodall and says "slide to wake." Nnnnngh. Jesus Christ - is it off or is it fucking on? I assume it's "sleeping"? Is it sleeping and drawing power, or is it essentially "off"? How do these things fuck up on and off so badly? I assume the Kindle can leave an image on the screen that requires no power when off, but because Amazon wants their technology to seem like "magic," they don't actually come out and fucking tell you. Anyway, looking at this, I thought something along the lines of, "Wow, I bet when I turn this on, the screen's going to be all fucked up."

I turned the thing on (?) the next day and the screen was all fucked up. Hmm, maybe trying to cram an image up on the screen as the instruction to power down is given is a shitty idea, weird. Who could have guessed that intuitively, besides everyone who has ever used a computer and most dogs?

The good is that the experience of reading was totally fucking aces. I hate going to the library, because the library quickly turns into another chore. I really didn't want to buy any more physical books, but there was a ton of stuff I wanted to read, to make myself smarter and better-read. The Kindle is perfect.

The other good thing is that Amazon said they'd use One Day Express to get me a replacement Kindle, if I could be so kind to then send the defective one back. That means a lot, that they would essentially overnight a replacement to me. Good for them. I'm OK with their being bugs or whatever in new technology. It's fine. No - it is! It's totally fine. What matters is how a company responds, and I couldn't be happier with how Amazon handled it.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:29 am

ICJ, you are late to the party -- I was complaining about that stupid screen saver back in the spring of 2009!

http://www.robohara.com/?p=1435

There is (was?) a hack that let you replace Amazon's awesome collection of dead authors with whatever pictures you want. I downloaded about 20 different comic book covers and used those, so whenever I turned mine off, it had a book cover displayed on the screen. I thought it was cute.

Anyway, every Kindle upgrade either (A) won't run if you have the hack installed, or (B) undoes the hack. It reminds me of using Netscape back in the day. No matter how much better Netscape was than IE, I got tired of (re)installing Netscape on every machine I used/touched/reloaded, and eventually I just got used to using IE. And, in the same sense, I finally accepted my fate and got used to looking at Amazon's collection of dead authors. I never understood their position on that. Like, why would you not allow users to use their own screen saver pictures? It's such a win/win opportunity -- no coding on their part (all the hack did was redirect the screen shot directory to another one), and it's something I think EVERY KINDLE OWNER would appreciate.

The way I understand Amazon's "eInk" technology is it's kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch, in that the energy is spent in drawing the picture, but not maintaining it. In that sense, I think the screen saver doesn't use any battery while displaying random literary corpses.

One last thought -- don't forget about http://www.gutenberg.org -- 33,000 free books, and the Kindle will natively read anything in .txt or .pdf format.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 3:06 pm

ICJ, you are late to the party -- I was complaining about that stupid screen saver back in the spring of 2009!

That screensaver can't get enough abuse. It can't GITMO abuse!!

There is (was?) a hack that let you replace Amazon's awesome collection of dead authors with whatever pictures you want. I downloaded about 20 different comic book covers and used those, so whenever I turned mine off, it had a book cover displayed on the screen. I thought it was cute.

I am gonna try to remember to take a picture of how the screen looks, before I send it back. It really does look as if Jane Austin looked into my Kindle, psionically smashed the screen, perished, and then imprinted her own death visage onto it.

I also have a picture I need to upload of an underground house, but that's this whole other thing, marginally related to Kindles.

Anyway, every Kindle upgrade either (A) won't run if you have the hack installed, or (B) undoes the hack. It reminds me of using Netscape back in the day. No matter how much better Netscape was than IE, I got tired of (re)installing Netscape on every machine I used/touched/reloaded, and eventually I just got used to using IE. And, in the same sense, I finally accepted my fate and got used to looking at Amazon's collection of dead authors. I never understood their position on that. Like, why would you not allow users to use their own screen saver pictures? It's such a win/win opportunity -- no coding on their part (all the hack did was redirect the screen shot directory to another one), and it's something I think EVERY KINDLE OWNER would appreciate.

Goddamn infants. It really is out of control. These devices WE pay money for are OURS. I feel like a moron having to type that out. That is such a slap in the face - "herp derp, it's still our device, no dumb screensavers for you!" This aspect of our culture makes my fucking skin crawl. Every corporation does it, too. How fucking greasy. You would think they would get sick of being so pathetic and greasy, but no, they can't get greasy enough.

No computer programmer would suggest undoing such a hack, or not allowing users to put their own screensavers there. At least I hope! I will always believe that this "turn off Linux on the PS3," "turn off the screensaver hack on the Kindle" crap comes from a non-programmer with a different value system. So. So, why the fuck aren't programmers telling their inept middle managers to fuck the Christ off? God, as a profession, software engineers can best be depicted by a weeping yellow spine a mile long.

One last thought -- don't forget about http://www.gutenberg.org -- 33,000 free books, and the Kindle will natively read anything in .txt or .pdf format.

If I plug the Kindle into my PC, does it just come up as (essentially) a removable hard drive? I can look this up, it's cool. I'll see if the broken Kindle comes up. It would really be nice if we could just drag .txt files over and read them there.

Here's the other thing about the Kindle, and I will say this and never mention it again. Six months after I release Cryptozookeeper, I am getting a book up in the goddamn Kindle store. I don't have any specifications, but I won't rest until somet

(I had forgotten about Gutenberg and his magic project. Thank you, my friend.)

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Mon Feb 07, 2011 7:57 pm

Yeah, the Kindle shows up as a drive when connected to a PC via the USB cable. Anything in .TXT or .PDF format, you should just be able to drop/drag over to the Documents folder.

Also check out http://www.manybooks.net -- they take books from Project Gutenberg and convert them into multiple formats, including the Kindle's. Their books are also free, and sometimes they fix some of the weird formatting errors you'll encounter from reading plain text files.

If you are out and about and don't have a laptop and/or your USB cable with you, you can also browse to either of those websites and download the books directly -- just do a Save As and it'll stick 'em in the right directory.

---

The same thing with the screen saver applies to the Kindle's inability to sort your books into folders. It seems like such a non-feature to include. Instead of having 19 pages of books, it would have been nice to be able to sort them into a few folders/categories. But nooooooooooo.

RetroRomper · Post by **RetroRomper** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:29 pm

Fuck Amazon and Barnes and Noble: I had hoped that the Kindle had some sane sort of sorting system in place (so I could regret purchasing my nook) but it seems that the shelves system on B&N's ereader, a horrible system that requires one to select each book from the device (doesn't pick up directories in its documents folder) and add them to a "shelf." Is it even possible to have more than a few hundred books on a device at any one time without becoming overwhelmed? Argh... My dreams of dumping the Project Gutenberg collection onto a microSD card are shot.

I also use an ebook database/batch convertered called Calibre with my Nook: it automatically grabs, tags, and then converts PDF/TXT/Whatever into the native format of any of a number of popular ereaders. For me, that is ePub (ya know, an open standard now) or for the Kindle, whatever horrible Mobipocket laden, mutated, inbred bastard child of at least four different acquisitions Amazon uses.

The program is great for converting comics and books from zips and PDF files into epub: reading Tank Girl on my nook right now and converted my .lit and pdf collection already.

Calibre -

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 4:38 pm

I can't stand the goddamn screensaver. You know, I really wanted to avoid hacking this device. I hack EVERYTHING. (Read: I run scripts written by an actual hacker. I don't hack any of these things myself.) (Which you guys all knew.) (Look, nevermind.)

I am going to make pictures of the authors that are actually on this goddamn thing. Effinger. Gibson. Flack When He Writes His Next Book. Whoever The Broad Was That Wrote Jekyll And Hyde Unless It Was Emily Dickinson In Which Case I'll Just Leave Her On.

Why do they make me do this?? *They* made me do this.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 4:54 pm

Whoever The Broad Was That Wrote Jekyll And Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson was a woman? Balls!

I see the color version of these things has come out. Does that make it better? Text is text, no?

THE
PEN AND INK
AARDVARK

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:40 pm

This dummy message repaces my previous one because despite what the BBS software says, it will not allow me to delete this message.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:23 pm

AArdvark wrote:
Whoever The Broad Was That Wrote Jekyll And Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson was a woman? Balls!

I see the color version of these things has come out. Does that make it better? Text is text, no?

THE
PEN AND INK
AARDVARK

I don't know what happened here.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:46 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:No computer programmer would suggest undoing such a hack, or not allowing users to put their own screensavers there. At least I hope! I will always believe that this "turn off Linux on the PS3," "turn off the screensaver hack on the Kindle" crap comes from a non-programmer with a different value system. So. So, why the fuck aren't programmers telling their inept middle managers to fuck the Christ off? God, as a profession, software engineers can best be depicted by a weeping yellow spine a mile long.

I have a separate discussion on programmers here, in message #59687. I'll open it separately because I think it deserves separate coverage.