Since things are a little slow right now, it's time once again for an AtAT public service announcement, and today's topic is a doozy: Recognizing and Appreciating Irony. Longtime viewers already know that we've had our share of problems with irony over the years, which we can only assume is our own fault; after all, contemporary U.S. society is increasingly irony-free, so it's only to be expected that a wide cross-section of AtAT's viewership might be ill-equipped to process excess doses of the stuff, particularly if it's mixed with another outmoded ingredient known as "subtlety." We use less (a lot less) of the latter than the former, so we usually stay out of trouble, but every once in a while people take us just a hair too seriously about Apple-commissioned ninja attacks, sellouts to Microsoft, or foreign anatomical spellings.

Why are we bringing this up now, you ask? Well, it's because dozens-- no, seriously, dozens-- of AtAT viewers wrote in demanding that we incorporate Divisiontwo Magazine's unfavorable Mac mini review into our plotline and proceed to rip the author at least six new orifices. The only problem, of course, is that Divisiontwo's review is quite clearly a work of satire already. If you didn't recognize it as such, don't feel bad; we all get fished in now and again. Heck, we ourselves crank this junk out for a living (such as it is), and even we frothed good 'n' hard when we first encountered Dr. Richard Paley's insane rants about Apple's insidious conspiracy to "heed not the message of the Lord Jesus Christ." By the time we had done the research and realized that the whole thing was a work of satire, we'd already cranked out a whole scene about it, which we decided to go ahead and broadcast anyway-- with an addendum, of course.

Unfortunately, there's no magic formula when it comes to recognizing irony, but absurdity is usually a helpful earmark-- especially in suspiciously high concentrations across several instances in a single article. In the Divisiontwo piece, for example, you might note the apparently-earnest suggestion that Apple "strike a deal with China to use inmates to assemble the mini" because it's not cheap enough yet, or the straight-faced claim that the mini "might be the perfect computer for grandmothers or autistic children." Note also that the "reviewer" purports to be "a DeVry graduate with an MCSE certification," which is, of course, the most useless qualification imaginable for an unbiased review of a Macintosh (or, for that matter, for just about anything else).

Furthermore, every one of the author's complaints is a criticism that only the most insular Wintel user could make; he bemoans the mini's lack of "a defragmenter or a registry cleaner" (but not the lack of a Registry), rails against claims that the Mac can run Office when he couldn't even get his Windows Office 2003 CD to install, and whines that Mail "can't execute scripts or open attachments without user intervention" right before noting that "in today's climate of non-stop worms, trojans and viruses, releasing a computer with no virus removal software is irresponsible on the part of Apple." There are a ton more-- practically one in every sentence. Notice how most of the complaints about the mini's "shortcomings" actually highlight serious flaws in the Windows architecture instead? Hey, neat-- that's irony!

We know what you're thinking: ignorant reviewers, analysts, and "journalists" make mistakes just like these all the time, so how can you tell when they're intentional and used for satiric effect? Well, consider the degree; the presence of one or two of these howlers might indicate a clueless author with a chronic case of lead poisoning, but there comes a point where you have to assume that anyone brick-stupid enough to have made this many errors would be too imbecilic to have figured out how to use the crayon to write the review in the first place. Of course, problems often arise when the satirist fails to gauge the irony-savviness of its audience and uses an inappropriate degree of subtlety. The problem is compounded in cases involving emotionally-charged subject matter (like, say, ignorant and unfair Mac reviews); just ask master 18-century satirist Jonathan Swift, whose brilliant A Modest Proposal practically caused riots when people thought he was seriously suggesting that the problems of hunger and overpopulation in Ireland could easily be solved by letting people eat babies.

So what can you do when you're not sure? Well, context can help immensely; if you put aside the Mac mini review for a second and scope out the rest of Divisiontwo, you'll find a ton of other articles, most of which you'll identify as obvious satire after the most cursory review. Read things twice, look for excessive absurdity, and consider whether what's said might actually be praising that which it criticizes and vice versa. If, after all that, you're still not sure whether what you're looking at is irony, you may be able to hire a Brit on a consultant basis to help; it's not a guaranteed solution (remember A Modest Proposal), but in general, the UK population seems less irony-deficient that those of us here in the colonies. Must be all those babies they eat.

Strap on them boots and start a-quakin', folks, because Napster's a-comin' ta GIT YA! Or, more accurately, it's coming after Apple and the iTunes Music Store, but hey, that's an assault on your lifestyle, right? Faithful viewer Bob Gulien tipped us off to a Reuters article which reports that Napster has finally launched its Napster To Go program. The company's "classic" service lets subscribers legally download an unlimited amount of music from the Napster catalog, but playback is tethered to a PC; now, for an extra five clams a month, Napster To Go subscribers can move their all-you-can-eat tunes onto supported portable music players and take their music with them-- and Napster is reportedly launching the service with a $30 million ad campaign (including a Super Bowl commercial) that aims squarely at the iTMS and the iPod.

The gist of the ads is apparently that, at iTMS prices, it would cost you $10,000 to buy enough music to fill a 40 GB iPod; why not just go with Napster and pay $15 a month, instead? Of course, there are a few flaws in that logic, the most obvious being that no one actually intends to buy ten thousand songs from the iTMS just to load up a virgin iPod; most people have at least a few of these wacky things called "CDs." And then there's the little issue of Napster not working with iPods anyway; we seriously doubt that people who already own one of Apple's players are going to replace them with something else just to use Napster To Go. (Mac users would have to get Wintels, too-- Napster still isn't Mac-compatible.) Likewise, we can't see people who've had their hearts set on getting an iPod suddenly deciding to jump the tracks and get a lamer player instead just because Napster says "hey, by the way, you're going to have to shell out an extra ten grand just to put music on that thing." People dumb enough to buy that line of reasoning are also dumb enough to have bought a Dell DJ in the first place, so no harm, no foul.

Meanwhile, faithful viewer Michael Wyszomierski notes that, at Napster's urging, The Register has done the math-- and concluded that renting music from Napster To Go is a terrible deal. Let's say you buy a player today and keep it for three years (which isn't so nuts; both of our over-three-years-old 1G iPods are still in daily use); over that time period, renting unlimited tunes from Napster would run you $538. That's enough for 53 albums from the iTMS, or roughly one new album every three weeks. The big difference is that at the end of that three years, your 53 iTMS albums still work just fine; you can move them to other computers and slap 'em onto new iPods until the cows return to Capistrano. But what about if you were a Napster To Go customer? Sure, you can listen to more music over those three years, but as soon as you stop paying that $15-a-month rental fee, your music turns back into a pumpkin and you're stuck listening to the sound of your own wallet laughing at you. Or you can keep paying the fee-- and paying, and paying, and paying-- so that twenty years from now, you're still listening to that same The Mummy Returns soundtrack and it's only cost you $3,600. Such a deal!

That's not to say, however, that we totally hate the idea of subscription services, and as we've mentioned before, if Apple introduced its own Mac- and iPod-compatible version of an iTMS unlimited-listening plan, we'd actually check it out-- provided that it were separate and distinct from the current buy-it-and-it's-(mostly)-yours-forever system, of course. (Personally, we think it'd make a nifty optional .Mac add-on, but that's just us.) If you think of it as personalized radio-- not unlike the monthly-fee satellite radio services-- then it makes some sense, but Napster trying to position it as a cost-effective replacement for the iTMS 99-cent-per-song model just strikes us as specious at best.

But maybe we're overestimating the intelligence of the buying public; we suppose we'll wait and see what happens once this Napster To Go ad hits zillions of Super Bowl-tuned screens on Sunday. Still, we're not exactly worried. Let's not forget what happened the last time an iTMS competitor blew tens of millions of dollars on an ad campaign that tried to win customers by taking potshots at Apple's offering: one such service even aired commercials featuring felon-rocker Tommy Lee smashing the old iTunes guitar to pieces. Remember those guys? BuyMusic.com? No?

Exactly.

Speaking of Super Bowl ads, as we've already mentioned, Apple's going to be a no-show to the World's Biggest Ad Orgy again this year-- but just like last year, at least we can look forward to Pepsi footing the bill for a few seconds of Apple-logo airtime. After all, those guys have a lot of syrup-'n'-fizzy-water at stake, so they naturally want to promote the living bejeezus out of the Pepsi iTunes Music Promotion Take 2: This Time We Swear There Are Caps. And while it'll obviously be no 1984 ad, whatever Pepsi comes up with will be better than nothing. Heck, even last year's "Hey Look, We're Thieving Kids Who Got Sued-- Drink Pepsi!" commercial got the Apple name out there in front of the viewers-- and probably at zero cost to Apple, which, considering how ridiculously expensive Super Bowl ad slots are, is actually a pretty sweet deal.

Well, wonder no more, because faithful viewer frozentundra informed us that those resourceful folks at AppleInsider have somehow gotten their grubby little mitts on a QuickTime version of one of the Pepsi-iTunes ads, and have posted it for all to see. Don't expect much, though; the commercial's actually a bit of a disappointment from an Apple fan's perspective. The ad itself isn't all that thrilling (people open bottles of Pepsi products, loud music comes pouring out; pretty straightforward and predictable, though not offensively so), but unlike last year, there's zero airtime for either Apple's name or its logo. The closest you get is that "iTunes.com" appears onscreen during the last three seconds of the commercial's 45.

There's reportedly another 30-second Pepsi-iTunes Super Bowl ad still in the making, but we assume it'll just be more of the same. Evidently Pepsi felt that for $2.4 million per ad slot, it wasn't under any obligation to share the screen with Apple this time around. And really, who could blame it? After all, it's probably also shelling out crazy ducats for however many of those 200 million potential free songs turn into actual downloads, and the whole idea behind this scheme is to promote Pepsi, not the iTunes Music Store. (But we're sure that traffic to iTunes.com will still spike after the commercials air.)

Actually, now that we think about it, though, it's actually almost better that the ads downplay the provider of the tunes.

Although we still think a Mac mini commercial might've been a good idea during this year's game. Just show the mini next to a variety of common household objects and keep flashing the price "$499." How could it lose?