“Going green” is a hot topic these days, as companies across the board try to cut their carbon footprint.  (That’s a hot term, too- “Carbon footprint.”)  So Tuesday night, the Governator himself appeared on the Jay Leno Show, and they took part in a “Green Car Challenge.”  Leno does a deadly impression of  Ah-nold, who then terminates Jay with some heavy weaponry. Hope they had insurance on that Focus.

Alan Ralsky got something for Christmas he probably didn’t want- a 51-month prison sentence.  Ralsky is also known as “The Godfather of Spam,” which clues you in on why he’s headed to the joint in the first place.  Spam filters can rest easy tonight.

“Backhanded compliment” might be more like it.  But Magic Mouse is one mouse that Wired doesn’t hate.  More here.

So apparently there’s a Facebook movie in the works.  Who knew?  Anyway, this story says that Facebook founder/wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg loves the NBC show “The West Wing” which wrapped a few years back.  It was created by the same bigwig who’s doing the Facebook movie.  The movie is based on a book that paints Zuckerberg and team in a “Less-than-favorable light.”  But maybe given his West Wing enthusiasm, Z-Man will come around. 

Let’s face it, a large part of our population is going to go shopping on Friday.  Netbooks, iPods, iPhones, those little foamy things that you lose from your iPod earphones, they’re gonna be big-big-big.  My question is, when did this suddenly become a national obsession? Stores used to open at 6am on Friday, and now they’re opening on Thanksgiving.  Gotta have that combo printer/backgammon board, after all.

Everywhere you turn, you see stories (like this one) about how big it’s going to be.  Did this date get made into a legitimate national holiday?   If so, are there Hallmark cards?  If there are no Hallmark cards, then there can be no holiday.  (This discussion sounds very Seinfeld-ish.)  But you know it’s become a National Day of Importance..when it has a website.   Check all the ads..right here.  And good luck. I’ll be right here watching the streaming video from breathless CNBC reporters stationed at malls all over New Jersey.

I use Firefox exclusively.  (I do secretly admire Opera, those wacky Norwegians.)  But I love Chrome.  Why don’t I use Chrome instead of Firefox?  Extensions.  (Or lack of same.)  And guess what- we’re getting closer.

It’s that we don’t like poor people. And smokers just happen to be a really good proxy for poor people. And yes, we intentionally try to drive them away by giving them really bad service. I know what you’re thinking: Do companies really do this? Well, friend, they do if they care about protecting their brand.

Two-word example: Helly Hansen, which used to be a decent maker of outdoorwear but then got taken over by rappers. Another example: Burberry and the chavs.

You know who else we try to keep away? The elderly. If we get a machine in that has that “old people” smell, we’ll totally invent some really stupid reason why we won’t honor the warranty. The more stupid the reason, the better. We want those old fuckers to get pissed. It totally works, too.

Suddenly people are up in arms over the fact that if you bring in a Mac for repair and we open it up and it reeks of smoke then we’re not going to honor the warranty. Apparently this is big news. Some Web site called Consumerist broke the story, and now it’s getting picked everywhere, like on ZDnet, and the haters are having a field day. Consumerist makes a point of saying how the smokers appealed directly to me, and I shot them down too.

Okay. Look. If you spill a cup of coffee or water or whatever into your MacBook Pro, and you bring it in and ask us to fix it under wararnty, we tell you no. How is smoking any different? We’re not telling you not to smoke. We’re not trying to tell you how to live your life. We don’t want to control you. We’re just saying that if you mess up your computer by smoking around it, then it’s your fault, not ours.

Just FYI, smoking is just one of many things that can void your warranty. You can’t believe the stuff people bring in and try to foist off on us, eg MacBooks that clearly have been dropped or otherwise mistreated. The most common one we see is a MacBook with scratches on it — an indication that its owner has ignored our recommendation that the MacBook be carried in a padded neoprene case at all times.

These people get all upset when our geniuses point out a scratch and say, Sorry, but clearly you haven’t been taking care of this MacBook, so we’re not going to replace the hard drive. The customers say how does a scratch cause the hard drive to fail and we say we’re not mind readers here, we can’t go back in time and see what you actually did to the machine, but clearly you didn’t respect your Mac.

We also see a lot of machines that haven’t been kept clean, or that have been cleaned with cloths and cleaners that are not on the Apple approved list. Windex? Are you fucking kidding me? You sprayed Windex on your Cinema display?

A lot of people also remove that sheet of tissue paper that comes in the MacBook above the keyboard and just toss it out. What the fuck are you thinking? The tissue paper is there for a reason, people. It keeps your screen from picking up specks of crap from the keyboard. It also keeps specks of crap from falling down between the keys. Correct procedure is, you remove the tissue paper when you first get your MacBook. You fold the tissue paper in half, then in half again, and then in half again. You place that neatly folded tissue paper into your special neoprene case, and whenever you put the MacBook away, you unfold the tissue paper and place it carefully over your keyboard.

If you don’t like the tissue paper, you can buy a chamois cloth that does the same thing. You should also consider a special silicone keyboard skin.

The idea is, you want to keep this thing pristine. You want it to look brand new. Do we really need to explain this?

There also are people who don’t wash their hands before they work on their computer, and then they expect us to touch their keyboard and fix it when it breaks. Ick. No way.

Finally, re: the smokers, I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but the fact is, they’ve done studies about smoking and socioeconomic status, and the studies show that smokers tend to be lower-class, uneducated and poor. Not our audience, and if by some accident one of these folks does happen to buy a Mac, we do our best to give them shitty service and drive them away. Nothing personal, but there’s a reason Dell was put on this earth, people.

Filthy slut whore hackers strike again

Borg 2.0 announces intention to assimilate native Iraqis.