So let’s go back to [disgraced former Speaker Newt] Gingrich’s original sentence. “One of the things in the health bill is 16,000 additional IRS agents,” he said. First, that’s not a “thing in the health bill.” It’s an extrapolation from a CBO report. Second, the word “is” is wrong, as even the original GOP spin only used the word “may.” Third, the number 16,000 is wrong. Fourth, the word “agents” is wrong. But if the statement gets no credit for truth, it’s at least efficient: Not just anyone could pack four falsehoods into 13 words.
Day: April 8, 2010
Steve is showing a completely interactive ad here, almost like a sub-app inside the application. Embedded video, toys to play with. Really impressive as far as mobile advertising goes. If that kind of thing excites you.
Joshua Topolsky, liveblogging the iPhone OS 4 event.
He hits on the key point: advertising, no matter how great, only excites the advertiser, generally not the advertisee (though in narrow circumstances: of course, you’re glad to hear about something that interests you. 99.9% of all web-based advertising I’ve ever seen would interest no one). Nothing poses more of a hazard to the platform than opening this sort of floodgate for intrusive, platform-wide ads than does iAd.
Which Apple itself introduced today.
The examples shown seem tame enough, but then it always seems tame to start. Advertisers simply will not content themselves with opt-in advertising tucked away inside an app, and the new suspend/resume function means there’s no escape, the interrupting ad will still be waiting for you when you return; these are the people to whom you’ve just given the keys to the kingdom, and it has the capacity to make the crown jewels (the information-driven apps) totally unusable.
Pundits keep thinking Apple is going to “closed” itself out of the mobile market just like they all have convinced themselves that Apple did in the PC market. They won’t. But if it’s not careful, Apple will ultimately advertise itself out of the market.
He hits on the key point: advertising, no matter how great, only excites the advertiser, generally not the advertisee (though in narrow circumstances: of course, you’re glad to hear about something that interests you. 99.9% of all web-based advertising I’ve ever seen would interest no one). Nothing poses more of a hazard to the platform than opening this sort of floodgate for intrusive, platform-wide ads than does iAd.
Which Apple itself introduced today.
The examples shown seem tame enough, but then it always seems tame to start. Advertisers simply will not content themselves with opt-in advertising tucked away inside an app, and the new suspend/resume function means there’s no escape, the interrupting ad will still be waiting for you when you return; these are the people to whom you’ve just given the keys to the kingdom, and it has the capacity to make the crown jewels (the information-driven apps) totally unusable.
Pundits keep thinking Apple is going to “closed” itself out of the mobile market just like they all have convinced themselves that Apple did in the PC market. They won’t. But if it’s not careful, Apple will ultimately advertise itself out of the market.
Repeal, Replace, and Recur
The Onion gives the GOP (and you, the ‘Merican people) a little taste of what running the 2010 campaign on a complete repeal basis will look like:
“Republicans have no greater ally in this fight than leukemia,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was flanked by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and the abnormal increase in white blood cells. “Denying insurance to Americans with preexisting conditions and ensuring that low-income Americans stand no chance of receiving quality health care are just a few of the core beliefs that the GOP and leukemia share.”
“And believe me, if anyone is angrier than the Republican Party that children can no longer be denied coverage for having preexisting conditions, it’s leukemia.” DeMint continued. “We’re a match made in heaven.”
[…]
“I look around and I see Sen. Bob Bennett, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, eosinophilic and megakaryoblastic leukemia, and Sen. Pat Roberts, and I think, ‘This is what the Republican Party is all about,’” Sen. McConnell said. “We don’t like this new bill. We don’t like that it will cut the national deficit by $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years. We don’t like that it’s now illegal for insurance companies to suddenly drop a parent for getting deathly ill. That’s why we’re so very proud to be working with leukemia.”
I’d say that about nails it. The Democrat ought to use that line about “what the Republican Party is all about” unedited and in its entirety, read by that scary voice dude, and superimposed on pictures of the sick and dying, lying about in the streets. Where the GOP wants them to go die. That’s how you push back against the right wing noise machine. And it’s the only thing your GOP opponent will really understand. Once that level of pushback happens over anything, John McCain will get his wish: everyone will suddenly sit down and agree to cut out all the shit. Until that day, nothing will change in the GOP. Just like a schoolyard bully, they badly need their nose bloodied.
(h/t jasencomstock)
In the end, I’m left with a box. It contains the buckram sample case and the die used to stamp the cockeyed spine printing. It also contains a stack of wonderful, kind letters from a man who has meant as much to readers as any writer ever can. I have not looked at those letters in years; to reread them would be too painful. Nor will I sell them. That, at least, I can do.
Lemkin 