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Television Media

Interesting Commercials 488

Posted by Hemos from the sumthin-to-watch dept.
So, I'm sitting here half-watching the Super Bowl and admiring some of the new commericials. So far, I think that the E*trade Monkey with Horse ad has been really good, as has the Kasparov vs. The Machines - the accenture and cingular ads have been, IMHO, as bland as Wonder bread. That, and the Cingular icon looks like a bold color version of the X icon, or something. The E*Trade Matrix rip-off ad was good as well - but with one quarter left, I'm not as impressed as in past years. What do you folks think?Update: 01/29 06:29 PM by H :Check out AdCritic's Superbowl site.
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Interesting Commercials

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  • pets.com (Score:5)

    by paulychamp ( 131799 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:10PM (#474011) Homepage
    the pets.com puppet had a killer cameo, it's good to see he is still getting work.
  • ...coz I'm in Canada and my bloody cable company replaces all the ads with crummy random boring local ads!! grr! I'm missing half the show! At least I got to see a Powerbook G4 add that I hadn't seen yet, but still!

  • Budwieser (Score:4)

    by jcampb12 ( 173079 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:14PM (#474022) Homepage
    The Bud commercials have been pretty good, esp the one with "What are you doing?," "Just watching the market, drinkin' an import" and "Hey Jimmy, pick up the cordless." Just shows that you have a sense of humor when you can make fun of yourself. BTW--anyone else notice that it is no longer the Budwieser blimp, it's the Budwieser.com blimp. I think they missed that bandwagon by a year.
  • I was watching Futurama (sorry) since I had not seen it in a long time and there was no game on that channel :) when I saw a (bah!) M$ commercial. New one, about how _reliable_ thier servers are. It showed an empty office with servers in it and spoke of how everyone was home enjoying milk and cookies with no worries because Redmond was running the show. I wonder if this is just to tout the "new" OS, or M$ standard campaign to make you forget about all of those outages last week at thier server farm...

  • Make that 2 cameos (Score:5)

    by Ratteau ( 183242 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:15PM (#474027) Homepage


    the pets.com puppet had a killer cameo

    Yeah, he looked great on Brittney Spears' arm during the halftime show.

  • CueCat's colons were lame. accenture's ">" in the middle of nowhere is LAME. Is ASCII the newest trend du jour with marketroids or what? Maybe in a few years we'll start seeing IPOs with names in pure l33t5p34|<?

    Oh wait. mind[avg_marketroid]==mind[avg_script_kiddie]. Mystery solved.

  • Superbowl? What superbowl? (Score:3)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:18PM (#474031)
    The commercials must be pretty boring if we're all here pushing reload on Slashdot. :)

  • Irresponsible journalism. (Score:4)

    by Urban Existentialist ( 307726 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:20PM (#474035) Homepage
    I think it is disgraceful that Hemos is trying to judge the best commercial before the superbowl is even over. Other advertisements will be discouraged from showing up due to the media having prematurely made up the American mind, especially before the repeats on the West Coast are fully over.

    This is exactly like how the News Agencies called the result of the election before it was truly over. We require, in a proper democracy, that our influential media hold its tongue and refuse to offer influential opinion before the contest is done.

    I can only hope that commercials yet to declare will not be disheartened, and will show up to stake their claim despite this knee jerk reaction.

    Shame on you Hemos.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

  • Re:what's with random punctuation? (Score:4)

    by BarefootClown ( 267581 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:20PM (#474036) Homepage
    It's not ASCII, it's an accent. Musical notation uses a ">" character to indicate that a note should be accented (3/4 value and one dynamic level louder, give or take). An interesting use of symbols, but a poor choice if people don't get it.

  • Find here the commercials (Score:3)

    by Felipe Hoffa ( 141801 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:20PM (#474037) Homepage Journal

    If you want to look at those comercials, you can always go to adcritic [adcritic.com].

    (I just want to be helpful, if you think I am a karma whore, mod me down).

    Fh

  • Is anyone else but me annoyed by the elitist 'I'm too good for the Super Bowl' air around here? :|

  • superbowl.adcritic.com (Score:5)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:30PM (#474050) Homepage Journal
    If only superbowl.adcritic.com [adcritic.com] weren't superbowled... oh wait, posting this isn't going to help, is it?

  • Super Bowl - It Super SUCKED!! (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:30PM (#474051)
    I think I speak for everyone here when I say the Super Bowl super sucked. Unless youre a retard, in that case, you speak for yourself.

    Pick your favorite mocking quote:

    "This disturbing commercial was brought to you by...Pepsi!"

    "Oh look! Its Sting, and his little portable Pakistani friend!"

    "Welcome to Super Bowl 35! Here's Sting Singing A Song About A Prostitute!"

    "Our fans might not like that we're on stage with a band like N'Sync...But..its like, we do that all the time."

    "Ok, everybody! Lets Punt!"

    "Let's kick! And kick some more!! We like kicking!"

    "And now, for the useless 3D instant replay."

    "New York - We Suck Balls."

    "Accenture -- Even We Don't Know What We Make."

    "I read PROPAGANDA [tilez.org]

  • Ok, Budweiser is parodying their own commercials. Pepsi is parodying Viagra commercials. This is pathetic. Sure, some of them are a little amusing, but amusing is all over the place. Some are even hilarious, but come on. How about product information? Oh, wait, people don't really care about that, do they?
  • I'm, of course, a Giants fan (NY area -- I normally root for the Jets) but this game was just awful. The Giants didn't even bother to play. (That, combined with the fact that the Ravens made their offense look like a joke).

    Hell, my little brother just switched over to the movie "Little Giants" on NBC. This isn't going to bode well for Survivor, either, with their pilot going on tonight. I could care less about the show (I was one of the few and the proud that didn't watch any of it last season), but if I were CBS I'd be shitting in my pants right now. Most people have probably switched channels.

  • That's been my fave so far. Made me laugh and it had a good point.

    I liked the silicon ad...oh wait, that was Ms. Spears at half time. :) *drool*
  • Well, the most poignant one was the American Legacy Foundation's assault on the Philip Morris positive smear campaign. I think that's the one that's going to stand out in people's minds... I wish they'd show that one a little bit more throughout the year.
  • ...they have been SuperBowled.

  • Where Are The "MATRIX" Replays?! (Score:4)

    by BRock97 ( 17460 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:39PM (#474063) Homepage
    Reading in the local paper, the big draw of this super bowl were, as the paper put it, Matrix like replays. After having watching 3 quarters, I must say that it is a big let down. I guess a brief look at the technology is waranted:

    They have setup thirty-some cameras around the stadium that allow a continuous feed of imagery to computer located in the bowels of the programming center. This is all done via fiber, and is supposed to create that cool camera panning effect where the camera stops, swings around, and you are behind the play.

    That is a simple overview, but it gets the idea across. My take is that it is a little early to be seeing this. First off, only a select few plays even need this type of replay feature, and I believe the viewer only saw it two times before the half-time show. When it was used, it was jerky, and very, VERY pixelated. I don't see why they didn't just switch camera angles. This is specially true after hearing how much they spent to do something they hardly do. Maybe in a few years, computers can do interpolation, make it smoother, all that stuff, but for right now, leave it out of the game.

    As for best commercial, I would have to vote for the new "Wassup" with the Wall Street guys. Too much fun!

    Bryan R.

  • The attack on Phillip Morris. (Score:4)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:39PM (#474064) Journal
    Lame. I'm sorry old guy in the bed with a destroyed trachea, but Phillip Morris wont change their product until idiots like you decide to stop putting a roll of burning tobacco between your lips. Quit bitching and accept responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

    As for your foundation and that damn Truth campaign, take your frikking money and shove it somewhere where the sun _does_ shine. I'd rather see those billions of dollars go to finding cures for muscular distrophy or cancers that AREN'T self inflicted.
  • I really liked the fedex ad at the very beginning.. with the high power springs and the last line where the guy says he'll really miss the dog.
  • The only thing I liked about halftime was Britney in her tight pants. The rest sucked. My mother says that was because I am getting older and that the show didn't belong to my generation. Not that any superbowl halftime has been "good", just that this one was not as well done as previous superbowl halftimes.

    So who is right??

  • Re:Where Are The "MATRIX" Replays?! (Score:4)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:50PM (#474075) Journal
    Quite simply, I don't think the technology was implemented correctly in an unsuitable stadium.

    I don't believe that the control of the cameras have worked right. The two methods that would handle it the best would be to implant a tracking device into the football, the same way they do for FOX puck trak and the 10-yard-line. The other is to track the game directly from above, but you lack that in an open air stadium.

    I couldn't quite figure out how they were directing the cameras in this game, but it wasn't smooth.

    The other truth is that 30 cameras simply isn't enough. 104 would be good for a smooth 4 second 360 degree spin. When you rotate 180 around a play in a half oval on 15 cameras in one or two seconds, of course its going to look sucky. :)

  • Re:Budweiser, Pepsi

    That subject is proof positive that the advertisers have accomplished exactly what they were trying to do.

  • well since I missed it, did CBS use those matrix style effects that /. reported a few days ago? If so I'm gonna be pissed :)
  • This whole Super Bowl was relatively uneventful. A guy got his helmet knocked off but that it's. I guess it's not what it used to be. As for the commercials, well, you're right. There weren't many. Of course I'd like to know where they got the panning cameras they used to shift views during game play? E*Trade may have ripped off the Matrix but didn't the Super Bowl camera men do that too? Only, it made sense when they did it.
  • I think the best commercial was the Snickers commercial when this guy was on the side of the street selling talking dolls, and some guy came up and asked him for the 'wazzzzzup' guy, and he smashed him! At last! Victory! That has been the most obnoxious series of commercials I have seen in years. There is nothing more annoying than hearing that phrase being repeated 50 times a day, so needless to say when the guy stomped that 'wazzzzzup' doll, I was cheering myself. In fact, I think there is a hunger inside me right now. ;)
  • Ever looked at sheet music before? Accented notes (notes played louder than others) are marked with a ">" above them.
  • so with a lot of the companies that had the big adds last year gone (ie. they are on f$!@dcompany.com) this year, you think this was a concern to HotJobs.com ? I mean Etrade actually has some money that comes in from its users... Hmm. lets see if we lose any from this year!

    Game got boring, but the three fg's in 40 some seconds was worth the time!
  • especially before the repeats on the West Coast are fully over.

    Unlike some other events, the SuperBowl is broadcast live across the US, as well as to some other countries.

    Mark Duell
  • One of the reasons for the jerkyness was that they were only using 33 video cameras, as compared to 100+ still cameras in The Matrix. The video was a bit grainy (I'm a video network engineer, so that's striking me as a bit curious.), but I agree; for a first time thing, this was good. A few years will see some remarkable improvements. I think, that www.superbowl.com [superbowl.com] is going to have EyeVision snippets online.
    ---------------------------------
    Only in America will someone order a
    Big Mac, large fries, and a Diet Coke.
  • Isn't ironic that same people who yelled about the dirty tactics and half-truths of tobacco advertising are the ones who sponser and run 'The Truth.' It too is half-truths and blame shifting, just now its coming from another source.

    If you're too dumn to realise that sucking the smoke from fire into your body is bad, well, thats what natural selection is for.
    FunOne

  • superbowl ala matrix (Score:3)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @06:06PM (#474097)
    WTF was up w/ the 3d shit going on there.

    "You can punt the ball, and stay in wonderland."

    "Or...you can run the kickoff back for a touchdown and i'll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes"


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • I was like "WTF a smaller IMac?" and then they showed some food in it.

    The new IMac - it cooks, it multitasks, it still has no floppy.
  • A radio station here (quebec city, CHOI) tried to convince (petitions etc) videotron into not letting global put their ads on the CBS (or whatever) channel two years ago, and didn't manage it. They even had videotron people in the studio one morning, that was interesting. They organize a special event for the superbowl since then, in a large Universite Laval hall, where you can go watch the superbowl with the ads etc but I don't know where they get their feed from. Oh well. Evolution will catch up with the CRTC someday I guess, just give em time....
  • Yeah, they did...

    But if it's any consolation, the video quality was crap.
  • If you're too dumn to realise that sucking the smoke from fire into your body is bad, well, thats what natural selection is for.

    Hear, hear. That's the real Truth.

    As for best commercials, my personal Top 5:
    1) Kasparov vs. everything
    2) "Whazzup" with the aliens
    3) "Whazzup" with the tragically white guys
    4) The dead dot-coms ad (nice smack around of the pets.com sock puppet - I can't believe those morons were suing Triumph The Insult Comic Dog!)
    5) The old guy doing the Matrix fight scenes (it was infinitely better than the lame low-res Matrix-style replays during the game)
  • Poignant? I'd be embarassed to be that old guy. "The tobacco companies say everything has changed. Everything but their deadly and addictive product." So DON'T SMOKE it! Seriously, is there anyone who started smoking in the past 10, or even 20 years, who is ignorant of the health risks? Is it SO hard to quit that nearly anyone older who wanted to couldn't have done so? No. It's the ultimate example of today's prevalent victim mentality. "I'm not responsible for my health problem, those evil tobacco companies made me smoke!" The tobacco company offered a product YOU chose to buy. No one made you smoke, and it's no one's fault but your own if you die of smoking related illnesses.

  • Re:Halftime Sucked (Score:3)

    by linuxpimp ( 236963 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @06:21PM (#474123) Homepage
    I'm just waiting for Aerosmith to get back on heroin and start rocking again. Their last three albums are all sound alike "sensitive" ballads. I mean, if you're going to wear vinyl form-fitting pants at sixty years old, you gotta have attitude, man. Drugs, songs about drugs, sex with barely legal groupies, songs about said groupies, and obscene lip/tongue gestures are what made them rock gods in the seventies. Had Steven Tyler molested Britney live on stage before an audience of millions, I would have a newfound respect for them. As it is, they suck.
  • The server seems to be up now. But who knows for how long ;).
  • > Quit bitching and accept responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

    Noone is bitching that they havent screwed
    themselves over by smoking.. Up until 7 days ago
    I smoked for 15 years. Yes I knew it was bad, Yes I wanted to quit.. Guess what. Its VERY VERY difficult to do. I have finally done it with the help of Zyban. Many studies say that smoking is more addictive then heroein. Unless you smoke you have no reason to bitch about those ads. They are designed to get smokers to think about quitting and give then some incentive. It amazes me that the cig companies put out ads touting how great they are and how they help charities, yet at the same time they manipulate the levels of nicotine and add in other chemicals to give nic more of a kick to keep people hooked.

  • Re:ahh damn (Score:4)

    by Error27 ( 100234 ) <error27 AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday January 28, 2001 @06:25PM (#474133) Homepage Journal
    They had a bunch of cameras at the top of the stadium and they could switch from one camera's viewpoint to the next.

    The problem was it that looking down from that angle with that sort of zoom you couldn't see very much of the field. So they'd turn the view until it was directly behind the quarter back and then they'd say, "You can tell that he doesn't have anyone open from this view." But you couldn't. You could tell that he didn't have anyone open within 3 feet but you couldn't see anything that was happenning further on down the field.

  • It's a sad thing to know that a football player makes more than any scientist,

    Why is that sad? There are plenty of scientists, but far fewer who can play professional football at the highest level. Supply and demand. Plus, you have to factor in the fact that the average career of a professional football player is 3 years... actually, the compensation differences don't seem that large.

  • Re:The attack on Phillip Morris. (Score:5)

    by Fixer ( 35500 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @06:44PM (#474157) Homepage Journal
    manipulate the levels of nicotine and add in other chemicals to give nic more of a kick to keep people hooked.
    This is a lie. Complete shit. But the truth is more sinister...

    Okay, people titrate their drug usage, whether it's alcohol, tobacco or heroin. This means they adjust how much they take to achieve a specific, desired level of effect. Nicotine is no different.

    Now, recall that, for some years now, a number of groups have been trying to force the tobacco companies to reduce the levels of nicotene in their products. I wonder if they have been financed by the tobacco companies themselves? Why?

    Because, by reducing the amount of the drug in each cigarette, you will SMOKE MORE to achieve the same dosage. And the cancer risk comes from total smoke exposure. So, the idea is this: Even though each cig has less drug in it, you end up smoking, and buying, more of them. Which increases your risk of developing cancer. And makes you poorer.

    Tobacco is addicting enough, they certainly don't need to add anything to it to make it more so. To be honest, I say that the anti-smoking crowd has collaberated (unwittingly, perhaps) to line the pockets of PM et. al, and to kill us smokers off even faster.

    Hence, I roll my own. I've gone from a pack a day of 100's to 10-12 regular sized cigs, per day. It also costs about $7.50 per carton's worth.

    So get your facts straight.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @06:48PM (#474160)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • hrm....anyone else find it ironic that the superbowl was played in....

    Florida!


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • it looks to be a whole new campaign. i saw two of those tonight. one for their database software and one for their web server software. both of them made me want to attack somebody with a sharpened slackware cd.

  • I was discussing the Accenture name change with the others at my superbowl party today (I'm a Giants fan in Rochester, MN... it will be very lonely tomorrow) - we can't figure out why a company who only has mindshare through their name would change the only thing they have going for them... of course, if they are anywhere near as bad as I've heard (and could guess from the quality people from my school that they hired "Hey, you barely graduated - want a job?") maybe the name change is a good idea...

    --
  • It would have also helped the continuity if they didn't freeze the slowmotion play before rotating the camera. They would show part of the play, freeze, rotate, show more of the play, freeze rotate, show the rest of the play. I'm sure the computers can handle playing the entire thing in slowmotion and rotating it as it goes.

    They may have used a compression format that was sub-par as well, because watching the slowmotion plays had about as much quality as old football films from the '70s.

  • That subject is proof positive that the advertisers have accomplished exactly what they were trying to do

    Not exactly - being aware of mass market consumer-pods like Budweiser and Pepsi ARE NOT going to make me (and maybe the poster) buy these things... in fact I will never buy these things because I believe in economically sound industry that dosnt rely on brainwashing the unwashed masses in order to survive. I actually like to know something about the item i intend to buy - and seeing 30 seconds of dancing frogs on Television is only going to make me assume that their product is actually the commercial (the marketing 'come-on') and NOT lager or cola.

    And therefore will suck shit because it is made to appeal to ~200Million mindless yankees who actually watch the superbowl to get their jollies from 30 second adverts...
  • Well, give me your MentalMcNugget then, because I am apparently one of the few 'geeks' that enjoy sporting events. There seems to be this attitude that to properly fit in, you are not allowed to like sports of any sort, that all jocks are evil (I play hockey, does that make me a jock?), etc., and that's just what I found a little annoying and wanted to get off my chest. Ohwell.
  • Obviously a vast improvement over their previous effort, the cat herding [adcritic.com] spot. I thought that was the dumbest spot I'd ever seen.

    I caught the pamplona running with the bulls/squirrels ad about halfway through (gotta tape the 'bowl so you don't miss the commercials during potty-breaks) and thought it looked funny. Then I realized it was the sequel to the cattle/cat drive spot and wasn't as impressed once I realized it was EDS.

    My all-time favorite still has to be the e-trade (or whatever) one last year with the guys in the garage with the monkey (we just wasted a million bucks!)

  • >the WWF will be a football league next year...

    Ah, you must mean the XFL, starting in a week or two. Yeah, not the pinnacle of human achievement.
    >The 'super bowl' is a rital of group hysteria, with no value and base exicution (sic)

    As for myself, I watch the superbowl every year because I am a football fan. I ignore the pre-game hysteria, switch channels at halftime, and don't really care all that much about the commercials. I am interested in seeing a number of highly skilled players in a game that I myself played for a number of years. If you watch it for the game, it is great (except when your team loses 31-7). The announcers and all the rest are rather easy to tune out, and heck, sometimes a little mind-numbing time is the best relaxation a brain can have.

    --
  • Plus, you have to factor in the fact that the average career of a professional football player is 3 years.

    Warning: dumb questions from a foriegner here

    So what happens to all the players that only play one or two seasons of pro football, or don't get drafted , given that (unlike soccer or in my case, Aussie Rules) there doesn't appear to be "minor leagues" - if you don't make it or fall out of the system, you'll never play football again.

    Is even the base pay so high that even a rookie who doesn't really make it set themselves up for life? Do they all go and buy bars and forever moan about the injury/coach/whatever that derailed their careers? Is there a charity to look after these unfortunate souls? ;)

  • I lost all respect for Bob Dole a long time ago, but some of this stuff is really ridiculous...
    --
  • More camera's could have helped the "jerkiness" but also remember, that in the matrix, frames were interpolated in between. No way to do that in realtime with computers available today, even at TV resolution and not film resolution. Not in the time it takes to make an instant replay. It actually probably takes a lot of juice just to grab all of the still frames and splice them into a single several second piece. Hey, in 20 years, I bet we'll see this a lot more, and it will look a lot nicer Spyky
  • yeah, seems to be the trend with renaming your company lately...

    telcordia (bellcore)
    lucent (bell labs)
    accenture (andersen?)
    verizon (GTE + ameritech?)
    cingular (forget which companies this used to be)

    ...and my least favorite

    convergys (my company, used to be Cincinnati Bell)

    WTF is with these dopey names?

  • Monkies have tails, apes do not. That was a chimpanzee. There's a difference.
  • Lame. I'm sorry old guy in the bed with a destroyed trachea, but Phillip Morris wont change their product until idiots like you decide to stop putting a roll of burning tobacco between your lips. Quit bitching and accept responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

    It's one thing when you come down this hard on a teenager or even someone thirty or forty years old. But the "old-timers" that are addicted to nicotene have a legitimate gripe... the tobacco companies lied and schemed to hook people when it wasn't public knowledge that smoking can give you cancer.
  • When Jamal Lewis rushed to the corner for a touchdown and the Giants challenged the call, the best view was courtesy of the "useless" 3D instant replay.

    That's what I thought at first but -- given that the 3D view is a reconstruction based on x camera angles, how can you tell if a given camera angle is real footage or an approximation? Here's yet another point where technology makes it easy to confuse reality with reenactment.

  • But the accent was over the t! That doesn't make sense at all!

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • No! You missed the technology preview at the beginning! That 3D stuff was real camera footage - all of it. They have several hundred cameras set up around the rim of the statium, all controlled by custom software that can coordinate them. They all feed into "custom" hard drive video recorders and there's software that can basically do "matrix" style video tricks in near real time.

    Frankly, seeing how they did that that was the coolest part of the whole 4 hours of TV. Although the halftime show with AeroSync was amusing.

    I agree with your thought that technology is sometimes making it harder to tell what's real and what's "reconstructed", but in this case, all the "EyeVision" stuff was real, and based on switching very quickly between hundreds of cameras.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • For those that don't know, when the name change came into affect all the AT&T Wireless & other companies that merged together phones change the logo over night. A co-worker's non-techy brother came by and told him he dropped his phone and now it's in Spanish. They spent days trying to figure out how to get it to quit saying 'Cingular' on the screen before they knew that the name had changed and this was the new one.
  • I don't know what happens to the wash outs, but there are several "minor-league" type places, such as NFL Europe, Arena Football, or soon the XFL, where they could go. Players do sometimes go to these leagues first and then to the NFL later (the most famous being Rams quaterback Kurt Warner, a former Arena player)

    The people who wash out altogether I assume get jobs and go back to being "normal" because the base pay in the NFL is not that high compared to most American pro sports. Around 100k if I remember right. Football actually has fairly low salaries. Even the really highly paid players usually earn about 8-9 million $ a year, which is a far cry from the 25 million a year Alex Rodriguez is now making in baseball, or the several NBA players earning 20 million or more per year (Shaquille O'Neal and Kevin Garnett come to mind...)

  • accenture is the kind of company that makes its money from providing consulting services to companies that are "in tough times", so i am willing to bet that they are gonna do just fine!
    The reason for the change in name was more of a market move as they become more directed towards the tech firm.....
  • Accually I rember in high school the whole "Jocks" vs "Geeks" thing... ummm my memorys may be diffrent than yours however...
    That whole jock pleading for his life thing really effects your prespective on life..

    There is a stereotype that exists that geeks are weak antisocal introverted computer freaks and jocks are strong violent socal airheads..
    Not true on both counts...
    Basicly people think the stereotypical bully is a jock... really he's a loser...

    Sports needs some intelect. Obveously stratagy is not the whole game but the strongest airhead jock is dead with a little planning...

    In short the "I'm above that" is really just "I'm better than that bully back at my high school".. That bully never made it into the NFL etc.. The jock you beat at chess did.. Or maybe he beat you...
    As for the lunitic sports fans.. don't seem much diffrent than the luntic video game fanatics.. They are just plain nuts...

  • Re:The attack on Phillip Morris. (Score:3)

    by Ryokurin ( 74729 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:57PM (#474239) Homepage
    it takes something seriously wrong for you to see before you quit or decide not to smoke.

    Mines was when I worked at wal-mart and a guy with a destroyed trachea and a oxygen tank came up to me and asked me where the cigarettes where. That completely turned me off.
  • When I saw this, the first thing I thought of was, "Jobs is gonna sue."

    Now, I think, "I hope he does, and I hope Foreman smacks him upside the head."
  • <i>BTW--anyone else notice that it is no longer the Budwieser blimp, it's the Budwieser.com blimp. I think they missed that bandwagon by a year.</i>

    LOL... more proof that humans have this knack for restating the obvious. For example: (refer to 'Hitchhiker's Guide')

    "It's a nice day outside."

    "You are very tall."

    "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!1"
    -
    The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]
  • Anyone in favor of replacing Natalie Portman with Britany Spears

    Naw, Britney would have to be in a major scifi movie trilogy to appeal to the /. crowd. Maybe she can make a cameo in the "Lord of the Rings" films as Frodo's ladyfriend, Dildo Boobins.

  • Could you possibly whine anymore and take this out of context? This article isn't a piece of journalism, it's a post by a geek asking other geeks what they thought about the commercials on a superbowl. It's not an attack on the democratic world as we know it, for Christ's sakes, chill out.

    It's kind of ironic that there are those in the /. community that constantly attack the people behind it for mispelling or doing something as "harmful" as asking for an opinion, yet the only thing these people can seemingly do is whine about how Slashdot is killing the free world and wasn't what it was, etc. OK. Taco can't spell. Maybe Hemos should have considered the time zones. But if all you can do is whine about it then I'm much more worried about the community that makes up Slashdot than those who actually run it.

  • Lets Go Mets! (Score:3)

    by quakeaddict ( 94195 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @08:07PM (#474249)
    wait'll next year!
    (I've been coding for quite a few hours this weekend)
  • "Hey, quite down, the commercials are on!"

    "Okay, game's back, so what were you saying about that..."


    Grades, Social Life, Sleep... pick two.

  • Accenture vs. Arthur Anderson (Score:4)

    by Eric Green ( 627 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @08:18PM (#474261) Homepage
    The basic problem: Arthur Anderson Consulting was originally a spinoff of Arthur Anderson Accounting, with its principles being partners in the accounting firm but being IT people rather than accountants. That didn't work too well, because the consulting firm was much more profitable than the accounting firm, yet the partnership agreement said that all partners shared equally in the profits of the combined company. So the IT people wanted out. They did things that Arthur Anderson didn't like, like charge Arthur Anderson major bucks to maintain Arthur Anderson's IT infrastructure. So Arthur Anderson said "Fine, we'll start our own internal IT consulting outfit." So Anderson Consulting said "Wait, no, you have a contract with us." So Arthur Anderson said "You can't use our name anymore, and we're going to sue you for the $15 billion dollars that the contract says you have to pay us if you go your own way." So lawsuits flew, squabbles happened, and eventually they settled it via arbitration. Anderson Consulting owed no $$$ to Arthur Anderson, but in exchange had to change their name. And so it goes in the wonderful wacky world of big business. See this link [yahoo.com] for a story about the whole deal.

    [Note: Details have been changed in order to protect the easily bored. Take nothing for granted, check all facts yourself, yada yada yada.]

    -E

  • Err, no, the Accenture name change is a result of a lawsuit between Arthur Anderson Accounting and Anderson Consulting. One of the provisions of the settlement was that Anderson Consulting had to change their name. In exchange, they did not have to pay Arthur Anderson Accounting $15 billion dollars. It was the surprise settlement of the year 2000, the accounting firm was rubbing their hands together at how much they could soak the consulting firm for in exchange for the consulting firm being able to go free (the contract between the two said the consulting firm had to pay $15 billion, the consulting firm was saying that the accounting firm had violated that contract by starting their own IT consulting firm but the accounting firm said "maybe, but not $15 billion worth!"), and the arbitrator kicked them in the nuts, awarding the accounting firm $0 in damages. Zero. Zilch. None. But the consulting firm had to find a new name, because the arbitrator said "if you are no longer associated with Arthur Anderson, you cannot use their name."

    -E

  • OK, so my coworkers are addicted to nicotine and get to take 3-5 15 minute smoke breaks outside every day?

    Well, I'm addicted to sex; I want to be able to cut out twice a day to screw my wife, girlfriend, hooker, etc. in the bushes next to the smoking area, Dammit!

    :) This is America! I want my equal freedoms!

    "Yes, the baby boomers; who have lived their entire lives based on one simple philosophy: GIVE ME THAT, IT's MINE!" -George Carlin

  • Re:Did anyone see the "other" commercial?? (Score:4)

    by Mr_Icon ( 124425 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @08:33PM (#474271) Homepage

    when I saw a (bah!) M$ commercial. New one, about how _reliable_ thier servers are. It showed an empty office with servers in it and spoke of how everyone was home enjoying milk and cookies with no worries because Redmond was running the show.

    I first saw it on Comedy Central, so I just figured it was part of the program.

  • You're calling 150 million americans brain-dead morons? YOU are "more intelligent" than those 150 million?

    It's a football game. It's ads that make most people laugh. And it's Brittney Spears. It's when we loosen our ties, and have some fun with friends.

    Elitism makes me puke. You don't like something, say you don't like it, but don't insult everyone else who might enjoy it.


    --
  • I was discussing the Accenture name change with the others at my superbowl party today (I'm a Giants fan in Rochester, MN... it will be very lonely tomorrow) - we can't figure out why a company who only has mindshare through their name would change the only thing they have going for them...

    The name change occured because Andersen Consulting is no longer associated with Aurthur Andersen or Andersen Corporation, who now have their own consulting arm, Arthur Andersen Consulting, as of around a year ago. In fact, I do believe there was some degree of legal action between the two former family members over the split.
  • I don't understand this mentality at all. Someone prove this wrong for me, so I can understand:
    If there were no tobacco companies, all those who have died from tobacco related ailments would not have. Bottom line.


    --
  • What, he's supposed to say "oops, I screwed up." and just sit in bed


    Yes. That is exactly what he should say.


    30 seconds. No catchphrases. No slogans ("Truth!"). No jokes. If that man said "I am a smoker. I screwed up." and spent the remained of the remainder of the time looking at the camera while beeps of a heart monitor run in the background, that would make a lot more of a difference than saying, essentially, "Phillip Morriss did this to me."

  • Hey, I love football and all, and I wouldn't complain about getting showered with 1000 dollar bills, but I think Bill Gates took the high road this week when he donated $100 million to AIDS research.

    On a related note, didn't one or more of the Slashdot guys say that they'd be donating some of the money they made on the VA Linux IPO? Did anything ever come of that? (Just curious, I really have no idea one way or the other.)

    Cheers,

  • It actually never made it to court. I believe that several lawsuits were actually filed, but then the two parties decided to take it to binding arbitration rather than spend decades winding it through the courts. Anderson Consulting won in that they did not have to pay the $15 billion to Arthur Anderson that the partnership agreement said, but in exchange they had to give up the Anderson name. All in all, Anderson Consulting probably won here -- you can buy a lot of name recognition with $15 billion.

    -E

  • "accenture is the kind of company that makes its money from providing consulting services to companies that are 'in tough times'"

    Wrong - Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) always made (and still makes) lots of money by low-balling consulting bids to get their foot in the door, then overcharging through change orders as long as they can get away with it. True stories: Farwest Federal S&L, a mortgage loan origination system, $2M bid vs $12M final bill - they were forced out of business, CEO was fired, etc. The Michigan unemployment bureau (I forget what its doublespeak name was), an unemployment benefits system, ~$10M bid vs ~$70M final bill for a system that didn't perform well - crippled them for a decade or more. The tales are many; most are buried by clients who won't admit to having been overcharged.

    Better to make a deal with the devil than hire Andersen Consulting, er... Accenture - at least the devil tells you up front that you're selling your soul to him.
  • Are you kidding? That's like saying alcoholics would be addicted to O'Doulls because they like the taste of the beer. And we all know where the sale of non-alcoholic brew has gone.

    Nicotine is a drug, as is alcohol. It is designed to keep people hooked onto the thing they are consuming.

    You don't see people who like soda struggling to quit. Or those who like to comb their frequently. In your mind, just the repeated action represents the addiction.

    Oh, and by the way, smoking kills you. That's how they lose customers. If they were striving to make more money, they would make a less cancerous cigarette.

  • Let's see. Researches think Tobacco started growing in America roughly 8,000 yesrs ago.

    About 3,000 years ago, it is believed that Indians started finding ways to smoke the plant which had thrived in many areas.

    We've found pictoral records created by the indians that document smoking activities created about 1,200 years ago.

    On 1492-10-12, Columbus recieved tobacco leaves, "certain dried leaves which gave off distinct fragrances" as indian gifts.... which he later threw away.

    Around 1497, Tobacco started getting smoked in Europe.

    Need I go on? People have been smoking for centruies before the founders of modern day cigarette manufacturers were concieved.

    "If there were no tobacco companies, all those who have died from tobacco related ailments would not have." is the most ridiculous thing I have read in all my life. Hopefully my children will never attend the same schools you attended. It obviously must have been teaching out of those "new" history books, the ones that say the equator runs through Texas.
  • Sure, they've denied it ever caused cancer and had tons of "proof" from well-financed studies. Big Tobacco didn't admit that smoking led to cancer until 1998. Lying, manipulating, advetising focused on children, these things make them liable and I have no sympathy for them.

    Its very easy in hindsight to ride the high horse now that you can see through their deception. Your "everybody knows" attitude is pretty unconvincing as everybody knew asbestos was safe. Let thetruth.com keep up the good work, especially when most of their ads are aimed at children, the very group big tobacco was trying to hook.

  • If there were no car companies, all those who have died from car accidents would not have.
    If there were no airline companies, all those who have died from plane crashes would not have.
    If there were no alcohol companies, all those who have died from a drunk driver would not have.

    Neither of these arguments make any sense. They sell a product which has the potential for harmful side-effects. Name an industry and I think I'll be able to come up with someone who would still be alive were it not for that industry. None of those are the fault of the industry, but the fault of the people using the product and plain old misfortune. Feel free to enact laws to regulate the business or make the business illegal if you think the risks are too bad. But don't blame them for carrying out a legal business which politicians are too scared to make illegal but at the same time want to screw over because it's popular to do so.

  • They're missing the crucial Aliens "Whazzup!" ad! What the fuck ... I mean, probably one of the funniest ads and they don't even have it up to be rated. This is like the Florida Fucking Recount all over again ...
  • My heart goes out to those people in India, and the Superbowl is "frivolous" compared to that tragedy any day.

    Being on the otherside of the world makes it remote enough that people can shut it out of their minds. But it would have been nice if their had been a moment of silence before the game, and it would have been bigger if the network had cancelled one of its "I love Raymond/monday lineup" ads and had given it to the Red Cross.

    The sad thing is that it seems to have bothered so few. What's more, our "moral" leader Dubya is falling behind [yahoo.com] other nations giving aid. If our nation gives a dime for federal aid, they should cut a check for this without "having to be asked."

    So yeah, the tragedy is not that people watched a game, but that so little consideration about the tragedy in India was given on the national level, or even at the game.

  • Actually it wasn't hundreds of cameras, more like 10.

    Those images were obtained by interpolating the frames between two cameras. I think about 5 frames between each pair of cameras.

    Why do you think they had to pause the video to change angles? They didn't have the processing speed to do realtime interpolating between 5 sets of frames so they took two frames at the same time and interpolated between them to obtain 5 frames.

  • Ad: Volkswagen "car in the tree"
    Premise:     Some idiot let the clutch out too soon and the car has so much power it ended up in a tree
    Subtext: Our customers are so stupid that they think a car will land in a tree right-side-up and the guy who let out the clutch too soon would magically appear on the ground below it without the car.

    PS: It's just an attempt at humor. I thought it was a pretty funny commercial.

  • Rob, they are still encoding and posting. I think they had to deal with server issues earlier. :(

  • Hey, it's just new technology. I'm pretty sure once it matures and as processing speeds increase, we will be able to get smooth real-time (you don't have to pause to change angles) motion at high-res. I thought it was pretty cool for a brand-new technology. I'm pretty sure that the first time they had multi-camera shots in a game there were problems with those back then but gradually the producers got better at using multiple angle replays as part of the broadcast.

  • Re:Ads picks: (Score:3)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @10:07PM (#474317) Homepage
    You've got to be kidding me. That Cingular ad was ludicrous, bordering on offensive. It really sickened me to see them take what was a very cool and eye-opening short and parlay it into a sales-pitch for fucking cellular phones. I hate their name, I hate their logo, and now, I hate their advertising department as well. You've got to wonder what kind of "genious" overpaid, MBA-type moronic PHBs would sign off on not only that stupid, annoying name, but then pick that stupid paint-splotch of a logo, and then, come back for thirds and sign off on such a stupid, frivolous, and sometimes insulting advertising campaign. I for one think that whoever the guilty party is should be promptly fired or demoted to the mail room.

    --

  • Re:The EDS 'running with the squirrels' (Score:3)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @10:27PM (#474322) Homepage
    Isn't that sort of the whole premise of Cingular? Something about this company has really rubbed me the same way. Lemme see if I can spell it out.
    1. SBC and BellSouth say: we aren't making enough money! How can we trick people into forking over more of it to us?
    2. Marketroid responds: let's merge and hire one of those big naming firms so come up with something distinctive that will stick in people's minds. Well pay them $2 million dollars in return for a 6-11 letter word. Just like Agilent! Yeah!
    3. Dumb, naive, MBA-educated, spoon-fed presidents of SBC & BellSouth respond: Yeah! This should help us maximize market capitalization through strategic synergizing while at the same time optimizing and streamlining our labor pool to eliminate duplicity (read: layoffs). Yeah!
    4. Marketroid responds: also, since the product we are trying to sell is about as common as, say, air, in the United States, we need to implement a new, metaphorical marketing campaign based on freedom of expression and personal liberty. This should help potential customers to forget that 3 out of every 5 of them already have a cellular phone. Yeah!
    5. MBAs: Yeah!
    6. Marketroid: one more thing: we're going to concoct some touching shorts using a gifted artist afflicted with multiple sclerosis. In their minds, people will equate this man's triumph of passion & communication over enormous physical difficulties with our cell-phones. Then they'll want to buy more cell-phones. Yeah!
    7. MBAs: Word! ... so who's up for steak?
    Everything about this company screams of "profit-motive, profit-motive, profit-motive." It's like, how dumb do they think we are?

    --

  • Re:Halftime Sucked (Score:3)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @11:23PM (#474336) Homepage Journal
    Obviously the NFL is going for the all-important pre-teen girl demographic, with the Backstreet Boys doing the National Anthem, and *N'Sync & Britney at halftime.

    At least they got Ray Charles to sing "America the Beautiful". Gotta love the way Ray sings it!

  • Re:It's sad... (Score:3)

    by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @01:47AM (#474349) Homepage
    Couple of disclaimers before I get into this. First off, I didn't see the TV show in question. Secondly, I am a Gulf War veteran. Went over with the 1st TAC Fighter Wing out of Virginia with the very first deployments that occurred in August prior to actual combat.

    I just love it when folks get themselves thinking they understand something about foriegn affairs and economics start talking about this war. You evidently don't quite appreciate just how important either oil or Saudi is to us.

    Whether we like it or not, our entire way of life today is heavily dependant on a steady flow of oil. It affects pretty much every means of transportation, which in turn effects the cost of food and pretty much any other thing you might purchase. Ask anyone living in the north eastern part of the United States what happens to their quality of life when they can't afford heating oil. At a high enough cost, people die. When food is priced beyond the reach of the poor, people die. It sucks; our use of oil as a primary means for power is just stupid; but that's the reality in which we entered that war.

    As to the political reasons, we weren't going there to protect Kuwait. We were there to protect Saudi. Aside from the bulk of the oil fields that the US buys from being there, this is the hub of the entire Islamic world. 2 of the 3 holy places in Islam sit within the borders of Saudi. They had a couple of thousand troops sitting at their northern border heavily armed. Had we let that area of the world go to a wacko like Saddam, do you honestly think we'd continue to be a player there politically? This is especially important to note as we continue our efforts to negotiate peace treaties.

    Yes, we greedy American types went to fight a war about oil. Hell, I went to go fight a war about oil. And for that, the trucks that bring the food to your local grocery store can afford the gas to do so. Your momma can afford to actually by that food, and put the gas in the SUV that brought it home. Bunch of greedy capitalists.

  • Cingular history... (Score:3)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @03:19AM (#474359) Journal
    Once upon a time, Cellular was created, and God (the gov) said there'd be two carriers in each market, the "A" side and the "B" side. The baby bells got the B side and the A side went to various other companies, telcos, independants.

    Most of the As got together and franchised a name, Cellular One. They also created roaming agreements between them so they could compete with the less diverse B side (which is a good thing when you want seemless roaming).

    Then the various PCS and GSM outfits came along, and Bs started buying As and each other. Verizon (a mish mash of a helluva lot of telcos) eventually bought a cellular one franchise in Southeast U.S. and with it somehow the rights to the name Cellular One. This forced the other Cellular One franchiesees to rename their franchise.

    So now we have two of the biggest cell companies with two stupid names, Verizon and Cingular.

    But I have a feeling they may not have had much choice. These days, you look for an available domain name first, and then name your company, not the other way around! There probably isn't many domain names left that are less than 10 chars with a few vowels in them....

  • Re:what is this? (Score:3)

    by KahunaBurger ( 123991 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:24AM (#474436)
    The Super Bowl doesn't have a large pre-teen girl audience, which is exactly why they brought in the boy bands, so that they could increase their ratings among those demographics. The hard core football fans are going to be watching anyway. It's the same reason why the networks ruin their sports coverage by giving us all those sappy personal profiles -- it gives the female audience that normally wouldn't turn in a reason to watch.

    uh, yeah. "I hate sports, but gee, they have sappy personal profiles of people I don't care about. better tune in!"

    I know some women who were planning on watching the Bowl, and they either a) really REALLY liked football and couldn't wait to see the game, b) were in an office pool, or c) thought the commercials might be cool. In other words, the exact same reasons men were planning on watching.

    Its possible that once they are watching, women like the profiles more than men (though hero worship is pretty thick amoung football watching guys, so I wouldn't bet on it) but you have the cause and effect mixed up. Women have constituted a good chunk of superbowl viewers for years, the sponsors are just now waking up and considering that part of their audience.

    Like I said, the yuppies commercial was funny, but I wonder what the reaction would've been if parallel racial stereotypes would've been played with. Say, a takeoff of those student achievement commercials with black kids inventing a new kind of pager with which to sell drugs, or an Ebonics spelling bee. Somehow I don't think they'd be seen with such good humor...

    yeah, funny how poking fun at people on the top of the heap is taken better than kicking those already at the bottom. Who would have thunk it? (sarcasm off)

    Didn't see the commercial, but I'm curious how much "racial" stereotyping was actually going on as opposed to class stereotyping. The latter has always been very common in "blue collar" humor, the former much rarer.

    Kahuna Burger

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