Dear Atlantic.com....

So I can't get to any actual stories on your site because I'm running an evil nasty ad blocker (so your pages load in a decent interval and I can actually find them under all the cruft).

Your page explains that you can "help" me whitelist your site so I'll see all of your wonderful ads, which you've worked hard to be sure are safe and reader-friendly. They weren't in the past--you were part of why I got the ad-blocker in the first place--and I can't help noticing that you don't say anything about them being annoying, intrusive, or disguised as editorial content (yes, I still remember your misbehavior in that regard).

Or, if "for any reason" I don't want ads (why wouldn't I? what's wrong with me? who doesn't love ads?) I can cough up approximately the cost of subscribing to the dead-tree version of your magazine, only without getting the dead-tree version.

Did I mention why I hit your site? You consistently produce reasonably accurate, guaranteed non-imflammatory articles that don't take much of a position on anything but do usually get the facts relatively straight. And I've been assigning 4 or 5 articles from your site every semester for one of my courses; that'd be the one with 120 to 150 students per semester.

I know math isn't your long suit, but try to work that out.

So, since you don't care to have me viewing your website, I guess I can stop doing that; you don't offer much that can't be found elsewhere (though I'll miss Coates' writing, but he also shows up in other places).

So enjoy your sanctimony, er, I mean sanctity, and purity, and how you've driven away people who use those nasty old ad-blockers, as you ride that shipwreck all the way to the bottom.

And why am I being so snarky about it? Because apparently you can't raise the money to keep the website going without being annoying (nobody likes a bully), but somehow you still have funds to send your writers off to a week-long junket in Aspen every year. So you'll pardon me if I'm not dripping with sympathy.

Adventures in Tech Support, Ctd.

The software for the AllShareCastHappyJoyousHarmonyFuntime dongle updated itself on my tablet. I therefore assume it's compatible.

Oh, and it's available at several places online for about half of what the manufacturer's website is selling it for. Just saying.

Adventures in Tech Support

So I got myself a tablet the other day, a Samsung Tab 4 10", model SM-T530NU. It's a nice tablet. I like it.

I took it to work to see if I could get it to interface with our overhead projectors. It took 2 adapters--mini-USB to HDMI, HDMI to VGA--and got no result. So, *after* trying this, I check the help files on the tablet.

No, as it turns out you can't just redirect the screen out the port, but there's something called Screen Mirroring that works with a separate dongle, sold separately. For about a hundred bucks. (SEE: What the market will bear, charging.) Basically this gizmo plugs into an HDMI device, and the tablet broadcasts wirelessly to this gizmo.

OK, fine. But as I'm looking at the web page for the device in question, I see a link for "list of compatible devices," and double-check, and lo and behold, my tablet isn't on it. Though several earlier Samsung tablets are.

So: The tablet's documentation says to get this gizmo, but the gizmo's documentation says the tablet's not supported. Well, it doesn't explicitly say that my model ISN'T supported, but my tablet isn't on the list of things that ARE supported. A lot of their phones and tablets are, but not this one. Is that significant, or not?

Hmmmm..... That's when I made my mistake and tried the online tech support.

Large companies started using automated text-processing chatbots instead of real people for tech support years ago, to cut costs. They don't do the job very well and tend to be frustrating to use, but they're cheap and don't take vacations or complain about overtime. Since customer support is pretty much pure cost overhead, there's a strong incentive to do it as absolutely cheaply as possible.

And so the comedy of errors and repeating myself began. The first chatbot asked for the model number and then took 3 minutes to determine that it didn't know anything about that model and so it passed me to another one. That meant starting over from the beginning, because of course the reason a call is passed along can't be provided by the system  doing the passing.

This time it only took 3 attempts to get my question--is the AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device compatible with this tablet?--across. And a loooong delay, ending in "that device isn't compatible with all tablets, you can find more information here," with a link back to the web page that caused me the question in the first place. It asked for confirmation that I could reach the page, and then switched immediately into "thank you very much my I upsell you into some other things?" mode.

So, I have no idea if:

• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device is in fact compatible with my tablet, and they just haven't updated the webpage; 
• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device was compatible with earlier models, and they just copied the help files on the tablet without checking to see if they still applied or not (meaning it's a crapshoot and they don't know if their devices work together or not), or 
• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device is definitely not compatible with my tablet and the documentation on the tablet itself is just wrong, being carried over incorrectly from an earlier model. 

Now, I'm mighty curious about which of those it might be. But not curious enough to pay a hundred bucks to find out.

And the beat goes on....

Dear Salon.com....

You win. You've made it clear that it's impossible to view your site without getting bombarded with ads for the "American Blackout" special tomorrow night. They must have paid a lot for that kind of marketing.

I hope it's enough to offset the readers you're losing.

I usually hit your site a couple of times a day. I'll be back next week.

I just wonder....

...how many years of his tax returns did Congressman Ryan have to provide to the Romney team as part of the vetting process?

Just saying.

Great moments in proofreading

Salon.com edition.....

Slate.com as stalker

Slate.com has a social-media plugin thingy called MySlate. They really, really want you to use it. They put ads for it on every darn page. Sometimes when you're reading an article, a popup flies over from the side to try to get you to sign up for it.

This morning, I learned that clicking a link to read an article gets a full-page pop-up that blocks you completely because they just want you to know how incredibly amazingly awesome it is And of course, it's got the usual microscopically sized, barely-contrasting-color close button, so it keeps it right there on the screen in front of you as long as possible.

Apparently their theory is this: If they've ignored the other popups and closed them without following the links for the last 50 times, they're obviously just being coy, but if we bomb them enough with intrusive-enough ads for this thing they obviously don't want, they'll relent and give in. The behavior is exactly the same as an abusive stalking would-be lover.

Why do so many sites assume that readers have no other options, and that their precious 'content' is so amazingly unique that users will put up with any amount of harassment to get it? Dear Slate.com: If you annoy me enough, I won't give in; I just won't be back. You're dumping enough cookies on my computer already, a simple flag of "Hm, this guy's turned down joining our incredibly amazingly awesome crappy add-on 20 times already, maybe, just maybe, he's really not interested." Is that so hard?

In answer to your question

Mark Kleiman asks:

Aren’t there any grown-ups left in the GOP?

No.

Next, please....

Andrew's at it again...

Sullivan piles on the self-pity:

My backing of marriage equality was also the pretext for outing my sex life by leftists who regarded anyone supporting marriage rights having sex when single as some sort of hypocrisy!

No, Andrew. Your sneering condescension toward the immaturity and irresponsibility of the casual-sex crowd, WHILE YOU WERE A PART OF THAT CROWD, was some sort of hypocrisy.

To quote a friend of mine, "Now get down off that cross, we need the wood!"

Generals With Issues

Sometimes you just don't know what to say. I wonder what he thinks about late at night....

Headline of the day

[h/t: Political Carnival]

Dear Newsweek...

I have received your renewal reminder, and the deal you're offering me to renew my subscription certainly looks like a good deal. Much cheaper than the cover price. Just a reminder of why I've been a subscriber for so long!

Until, of course, I go to your website and notice that you're charging me more to renew than you're charging a new subscriber to sign up for the same length of time. How much more? About 20% more.

Odd that you charge loyal long-term customers more than new subscribers.

At any rate, I've decided to let my subscription run out. After a few weeks, if I miss having your magazine around, I'll re-subscribe and get the cheaper rate.

It seems an odd way of doing business to me. I don't demand to pay less than other subscribers, but I see no reason to charge renewing subscribers more. I guess I just don't understand the magazine business.

Of course, looking at your recent sales and financial figures, neither do you.

Quote of the Day

Nate Silver notes that from October 1999 through September 2009 there has been one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 airplane departures.

Furthermore, "the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning."

With a large tip of the hat to Paddy at The Political Carnival.

Why I [heart] Mark Kleiman

Because sometimes, there simply oughta be a law.

Maine, the day after

A blogger at DKos nails it.

"Then at one o'clock you're heading out to the county jail to marry Carr the crack addict mother of eight and Blankenship the axe murderer before they send him up to maximum security for a hundred years. Then you've got Welch and Nutt at two-thirty. He's the neo-nazi anarchist and she's the former nun who got booted for schtupping sixteen priests, two bishops and a cardinal."

"Great. As long as they love each other..."

"Then at two you're joining Kettlebaum the porn addict and Ganz the kitten-drowner, and at three you'll unite Smith the deadbeat dad and Browlowski, who chain smokes in front of her kids."

"And then the gay couple at four, right?"

"Oh, no, sir! That's against the law. They're too unstable for marriage..."

Go read the whole thing, it's worth it.

[H/T: Louise, at Pam's]

Dear State Farm Insurance

I understand that each agent is an independent businessperson. I get it.

However, when I get the same form letter telling me I can save $426 from three different agents all on the same day, it makes it seem as if your agents are competing mostly with each other (rather than agents of other companies) and makes me wonder about how well-organized the entire operation is.

That is all.

Image of the day

[h/t: GottaLaff]

No life? Hardly...

There's a how-many-movies-have-you-seen meme floating around Facebook at the moment that begins with the declaration:

SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life.

Note that we're never told who's supposing this...

But at any rate. Let's test that assumption.

Assume that you see 85 movies. Further assume that the movies you see average 2 1/2 hours, about as long as the latest Harry Potter installment. (Mini-review: It was good, but as a friend of mine put it, I really don't see what there is about this that inspires such fanaticism...).

Further assume you spend 8 hours per night sleeping, 40 hours per week working, and 3 hours per day in other stuff (eating, commuting, etc), leaving 51 hours per week potential movie-watching time.

Let us further assume your movie-watching career began at age 10, and you are 35 when you take the quiz.

51 hours per week * 52 weeks per year * 25 years = 66,300 potential movie-watching hours.
85 movies * 2.5 hours each = 212.5 hours.

So if you've seen 85 movies, you've spent 212.5/66,300 = 0.321% (rounding up) of your time watching movies.

Hardly into "you have no life" territory.

As an aside, it's amazing what you can distract yourself with when you don't want to work....

This Just In (Badly Worded Headline Division)

Man Held in LA in Stolen Violin Case

What is it, some kind of kidnapping? And in addition to stuffing the poor man into a violin case, the case itself was stolen? Is that even relevant? Given what you'd have to do to get someone (even a very small someone) stuffed into a violin case, is ownership of the violin case itself really the issue here?

Elevating the Debate

Wonkette sums up my feelings about Chuck Grassley's indignant twitters to/about Obama, which have the depth & tone you'd expect from a teenager:

We are all stupider for having read this.

Seriously, go read the twits in question. They read like something an overprivileged teenager would write. This clown is a U.S. Senator? Yes, the 140-character limit of Twitter doesn't lend itself to pensive asides or elaborately-built-up arguments, but this is absurd.

Proof once more of the dictum from the founding fathers (I don't remember if it was Jefferson or Madison, and could be wrong about both of them). Democracy doesn't ensure the people get the leadership they want, but it does ensure they get the leadership they deserve.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]