Macs A Key Part Of Controversial Anti-Bush Ads (some mac users all tingly about socialism)

"I think the message we tried to deliver is something we really believed in. We were passionate in our beliefs and everyone has a right in our democracy to do that."

Mr. Stowell was part of a team that produced one of 26 political commercials in a recent online contest soliciting political ads critical of President Bush. Entitled the 'Bush in 30 seconds' TV ad contest and sponsored by the Washington, DC-based public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, Stowell's spot - entitled "Pop Quiz" - was produced and edited on a Mac.

In fact, the majority of the finalist spots were produced using Macs. From medium to large design studios and often someone's home basement, the commercials came from a variety of people who had an idea, a passion to speak their mind and often a Mac on their desktop.

"Here was the first time I ever saw this kind of idea of people using the freedom that comes from technology for a political purpose to speak their minds," said Mr. Stowell, founder of the New York City graphic design studio, Open.

Co-produced with colleagues Susan Barber, Cara Brower and Kate Kittredge, the spot quickly asks the viewer to answer rapid fire questions on a variety of political issues and attributes the answers to various news sources. In every instance, the critical answer is "George W. Bush." The spot ends with the question, "What's wrong with this picture?"

All of the spot are similar to "Pop Quiz" in that they criticize the president on a variety of fronts, from the controversial war in Iraq to the national debt and even educational funding.

The spot voted best overall, entitled "Child's Pay," made news headlines in late January after the CBS television network decided not to broadcast it during last Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII because of its long-standing policy not to air advocacy ads. Instead, the spot ran during the half-time of the NFL championship game, but on CNN, rather than on CBS's Super Bowl broadcast itself. The 30-second, dialogue-free spot featured children working as janitors, dishwashers and garbage collectors and ended with the caption, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

For many of the ad's producers, a Mac was the platform of choice that often made the difference between tedious editing over dozens of hours or days and producing a spot sometimes in just one afternoon.

Mr. Stowell and his team used a 1.25 MHz dual processor Power Mac G4 to produce "Pop Quiz," together with Adobe Illustrator to do the graphics and After Effects for the animation. One of the reasons Stowell and his team used simple type for their spot was to not only be different from the majority of other spots, but because they had decided to enter the competition very close to the deadline. "After we came up with the concept, we cranked it out in no time and the Mac made a big difference."

The runner-up for best overall ad was also produced on a Mac. Entitled "What Are We Teaching Our Children?", Fred Surr together with Ted Page and Janet Tashjian of Needham, Mass., produced a tongue in cheek spot that hit home their message.

The ad features six young kids, each delivering a speech to adults on what they would do if they were elected president - from, "If elected, I'll lie about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade another country," to "I'll leave no child behind, unless they can't afford it."

Mr. Surr, an independent producer and founder of the production company Captains of Industry, used a Media 100 editing system on a Power Mac 9600 to edit the spot in no more than "six to eight hours."

A Mac user since 1988, Mr. Surr was just as passionate about his Macs as he was about his political spot. "I don't like Windows, honestly. I think it's a kludge format and always has been."

Because all of the talent and production workers donated their time, Mr. Surr was able to produce the spot for less than US$100 after renting one single item - a professional microphone. "Everyone donated their time," he said. "We had six kids, about 10 adults together with extras and four others at the shoot."

Reaction to the spot has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Mr. Surr. "Even friends and colleagues that are Republicans look at the spot chuckling and say, 'Well, you can't argue with the premise.' "

Most of the spots were inexpensive to make, except for one produced on film by Adam Feinstein, an independent film maker from New York City. Entitled "Polygraph," the spot was shot on Super 16mm film and then transferred using the Telecine process of converting a film negative to video tape. It was then edited on a 533MHz-dual processor Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro.

About US$1,000 to shoot and produce, Mr. Feinstein turned to some 30 friends to donate money toward the cost of making the commercial. "I'm a filmmaker who has had my political soul stirred to life in the last three years," Mr. Feinstein told The Mac Observer. "If I can credit Mr. Bush with anything, it's making me realize how important it is for me as a media maker to say and do something that can make a difference."

The spot shows an actual polygraph machine registering responses to comments made by President Bush during his State of the Union speech in January of 2003. As Mr. Bush utters certain facts, the polygraph is shown violently moving, as if to convince the viewer that his comments are all lies.

But it was the parody piece "Desktop" that hits closest to home for Mac users, regardless of their political beliefs.

David Haynes is a filmmaker, writer and director making independent films under his small production company Tanglewood Films in Dallas, Texas. Having entered the competition later than most, Mr. Haynes had little time to devise a concept, shoot it and edit it.

For him, the star of his spot was his Mac. Mr. Haynes used his Sony VX-2000 digital camera to shoot his OS 9 desktop. "I sort of brainstormed the idea of using the Mac and having the file folders represent different components of our government and different programs that have happened over the last few years that in my opinion were not so great," he said.

The spot shows a desktop pointer moving folders marked 'Social Security, 'Environment', 'Civil Liberties' and more over the seal of the president to the Trash. Only after a message warns that the folders will be permanently deleted and a bloated trash icon erases the folders does the spot end with the words, "What's next?"

"I've never really been a political person and followed politics," Mr. Haynes responded when asked what was the catalyst for him to produce the political spot. "There was a point during the build up to the Iraq war that the Bush Administration seemed to want to go to war really, really badly. Something about that raised a red flag in my head and it didn't seem very American and didn't feel right."

Mr. Haynes used an 867 MHz Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro to edit his 30-second spot, which took about a day to shoot and produce.

All the producers were convinced their Macs made a difference in being able to focus on making the best ad, instead of worrying about the technical aspects.

"My Mac allowed me to focus on the message," said Mr. Surr. "I just find it to be really, really dependable. There's not a lot of surprises on a Mac. It doesn't crash on me and it's just a solid work station."

"If you subtracted all the Macs in my life, I would be paralyzed," said Mr. Feinstein. "Every project I haven't edited on film, I've edited on a Mac."

When Mr. Stowell was asked why his studio only uses Mac, his response was short and sweet. "Why? I can't think of any reason why not."

There wasn't a suitable alternative, but that doesn't mean they weren't a piece of crap. Remember how easy it was to corrupt a 5 1/4, had to treat them like they wre nitro. They were state of the art, but there was no doubt that they had to be replaced as soon as the state of the art allowed.

Floppies are still popular right here in the software industry. Getting them is easy, I've got a couple dozen spares right here on my desk. If they went away I'd either need 16 more computers or 1 more engineer.

More insults from you. Uninterested in anything you have to say if you can't say it politely. Your rudeness proves you are not worth my time. Rewrite it without the insults. Or better yet just go away. You came in here immediately being insulting and I don't need people like you in my life, there's the door, goodbye, good luck, good ridance.

Sorry it is true, has been true and continues to be true. Want me to ask someone with a CS degree? Sure:
Hey DiscoStu what are the stability numbers like for modern Windows machines?
Thanks for asking Disc, actually they're pretty solid. Can run for years on end without need of reboot and without crashing. A lot of people who don't use Windows think MS hasn't progressed at all since the days of Win3.1 and NT3.51 when the OS was clearly an unstable piece of crap. Luckily those days are long gone.

Forty years worth of Unix development is nice. BTW would you happen to know who was the first company to port Unix to the desktop? The company that stole a lot of ideas from Unix and VMS (and actually a lot of developers from Vax now that you mention it) to put into their first network enabled? Hint: you're saying their product is less stable than it is.

Been using Windows for over a decade, and I'm the kind of guy that's supposed to be a total virus victim. I don't run scanning software, I download from dangerous places on the internet, and I turn off automatic updating and am incredibly lazy about updating. And yet I go through life virus free. This is a "threat" that has been seriously overblown by the virus scanning industry.

" All computer technology is obsolete; it's just a matter of how much time it has before it is taken over by the next technology." No technology is obsolete until it's actually being replaced. All computer technology WILL be obsolete, but if the next tech isn't there it isn't obsolete yet (unless it totally blows like 5 1/4 did).

3 1/2s are more reliable than re-writable CDs, which right now would be the only thing that can replace them. It's not that I want floppies to last forever, but right now they irreplacable for a major chunk of the industry. The thing I see in the pipeline that might be able to take out floppies is virtual machines, but right now VMs aren't flawless replications of a computer and tend to err towards stability which makes them unacceptable as a testbed.

My "niche" is the software engineers. QA needs them constantly, development needs them when they do unit testing (so they should use them more than they do), support needs them when they replicate customer problems. This is the same group that keeps the DOS prompt around even though MS marketing keeps saying the next version of Windows will get rid of it. It's a pretty big niche, and it's a pretty important one.

Inside the software industry floppies are an absolute necessity, allows us to serious cut down on the number of machines we have for testing purposes and configuration time

We had a big lab of computers running dual-boot Linux/Windows. If a computer was trashed in testing or use (all the time) we'd just pop in a CD which would boot and grab the new image we wanted from the server. No floppy needed.

We then sent copies of the lab hardware/software all over the place to be run by the computer illiterate locals with simple instructions: if it dies while being hacked on by students, insert the CD, reboot and follow instructions pull a new image.

That's great if you have ONE image. I'm in the middle of updating my images right now (the calm between releases), I have between 8 and 12 images per computer, I run 8 computers in my testing. I don't want to have to keep track of 80 CDs, and when it's time to apply the latest patches I don't want to have to throw out 80 CDs, and at least half of my images wouldn't fit on a single CD anyway. 1 floppy, partitioned disks, and some network storage space gives me ready access to all those images in a way that simply can't be duplicated by anything else currently in the market.

And I'm not the only one that does this. I know folks that scoff at how few images I have.

Can run for years on end without need of reboot and without crashing.

You're funny! I've only seen that in rare cases where the machine was running minimum services and never messed with -- plus the machines were so far back on security updates that they were downright dangerous to run. Unless they do a major rewrite, Windows uptime will never be close to *NIX uptime.

A lot of people who don't use Windows think MS hasn't progressed at all since the days of Win3.1

I started using it with Windows 286, on up to XP and a bit of 2003. Massive improvement, but still a long way to go before they are as stable or secure as *NIX.

The company that stole a lot of ideas from Unix and VMS (and actually a lot of developers from Vax now that you mention it) to put into their first network enabled?

They took a lot of ideas, but they didn't use it itself. OS X actually runs on a BSD variant.

This is the same group that keeps the DOS prompt around even though MS marketing keeps saying the next version of Windows will get rid of it. It's a pretty big niche, and it's a pretty important one.

Exactly where couldn't a floppy be replaced by something better? Where would not having floppy drives hurt your work? We do software here too, on Dell laptops and servers, and there's not a floppy to be seen.

This is the same group that keeps the DOS prompt around

Glad to know I'm not alone.

I see it all the time. The machine I'm typing this on right now has only been shutdown because of power outages (we really need to move to a better building). Most of my desktop machines run and run no problems.

As for updates... yeah I'm lazy.

Didn't say it's as good as Nix. Just said it's a lot better than people are giving it credit for. Most users, who don't leave their computers on 24/7, can use their machine for years without a problem. That's the modern age. For desktop use Windows is now as stable as Mac. It's not up to going toe to toe with Unix as a server, for one thing Windows doesn't even run on big iron and if your key servers aren't big iron you're making a mistake (yes I'm thinking of our own IT department right now... I hate them).

Good for OSX.

1 floppy, partitioned disks, and some network storage space gives me ready access to all those images in a way that simply can't be duplicated by anything else currently in the market.

You and I are doing the same thing, only we were using CDs to boot instead of floppies, and this was several years ago.

Most of my desktop machines run and run no problems.

For years? You must be way behind on updates.

For desktop use Windows is now as stable as Mac.

Actually, I'd say for a while it was more stable than Mac, after 2K SP1 to when they worked the kinks out of OS X. Still, rebooting every once in a while when the OS gets unstable in 2K/XP is much better than the four times a day I had to do with 98.

if your key servers aren't big iron you're making a mistake (yes I'm thinking of our own IT department right now... I hate them).

Jealous much? :^)

Go partway to big iron and get a Mac -- you'll at least be using a POWER4 derivative (I know, just kidding, they changed a lot of what made the POWER4 good for big iron in making the PPC 970).

I told you where it would hurt my work. CDRWs aren't as durable and would frankly be a waste of space since there's no way I'd store all my images on CD, all I need is a meg for DOS, I've got the images on the harddrive. For booting from something other than the OS I'm trying to replace here are my options: floppy which works great, CD which is an unnecessary size and not as easily tweaked, and dual boot which is a waste of harddrive space and frankly not something Windows is good at and we don't support anything else so there's no reason to add linux partitions I can better use for storing images. Basically the floppies are a 3 1/2 inch dual boot system.

The continued existence of DOS is something to thank MS developers for. They keep having to shift it around and hide it from the marketing dweebs, but because they use it constantly they refuse to get rid of it.

I've got the images on the harddrive. For booting from something other than the OS I'm trying to replace here are my options: floppy which works great,

I hope you get the point though; it works fine for you in your market, but in corporate and consumer they aren't needed much anymore, and thus their coming demise.

and dual boot which is a waste of harddrive space and frankly not something Windows is good at and we don't support anything else so there's no reason to add linux partitions

That was our particular case, labs for students to do work in either Windows or Linux. All images were on a Linux server in the lab.

Floppies are better for base level booting, rewritable, durable, small, and you can leave them half in the machine so you never lose them. On most of my test machines you might as well get rid of the CDRom, I only use it when an MS patch demands to see the CD and if we were properly using our network architecture I wouldn't need them then either.

On my desktop machine I'm waaaaaaaaay behind on updates usually. Sometimes I do the update and refuse to reboot, especially in this building where I can trust a powerspike will reboot for me in a few months.

If I was running XP for my desktop at work i'd probably have to reboot a lot, i've found XP doesn't clean up the virtual memory well. At home I can only get a week or so before I decide it's time to kick it in the pants. But it's pretty rare for me to leave my home machine on that long anyway, vacations are about it.

I hate our IT department. The good news is they didn't set my account up right and I don't have SMS spying on me. The bad news is... everything else. Our network is constant proof of MS's limitations.

A bunch of old DECs would run our network better.

Sure outside the Windows platform software industry floppies might not be necessary (though I still insist on them at home and consider a computer without one incomplete... and I've got spares to make sure I'm floppy enabled for a long time), but that's a big niche market and they still have a useful life outside that market that's worth the price of the hardware (because it's dirt cheap, not worth more than like $20). And the first iMac was way too early to start getting rid of them. I'll stand by that till I die, Steve blew the call... of course it is Macs we're talking about and Macs always made the floppy annoying anyway (what was up with no manual eject button, God help you when a floppy got old and didn't eject right and you had to straighten a paperclip and start poking around in that stupid hole trying to find the magic switch... there's a whole R rated parable in the tale of the Mac floppy). So maybe it wasn't too soon for Macs because Mac floppies were never as useful as PC floppies in the first place.

Oh yeah, if we were a multi-platform company things would be completely different. But most Windows shops aren't multi-platform. And like I said, if they get the virtual machine stuff working accurately (probably when not if) then we'll all flee from full sized disk images and the floppy will be well and truly dead.

There wasn't a suitable alternative, but that doesn't mean they weren't a piece of crap. Remember how easy it was to corrupt a 5 1/4, had to treat them like they wre nitro.

Back then, the alternative was cassette tape. Now that was an easily corrupted format. Using cassette tape was like transporting six cases of old leaky dynamite in an run-down truck across 208 miles of muddy jungle mountain roads and ramshackle rope bridges in a howling storm.

Uuuugh, don't remind of using cassettes as "storage". A friend of mine had a C64, I swear you could hear his tape drive chugging a block away.

But again, that doesn't mean 5 1/4s were good, just the best we could get. I distinctly remember using 5 1/4s and thinking that if something better didn't come a long the industry would never grow beyond the dweeb niche. Thankfully we got 3 1/2s and the real savior of the industry: harddrives.

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