Media: Phillips commercial blows fluff

A Phillips TV commercial has kids asking why various things in life aren't easy enough for them to understand and closes with (I know, these are all synonyms) completely brainless fluff-filled marketing hooey: "Why can't technology be as simple as the box it comes in?"

Because then it would be an empty cardboard box -- not a 2.6-megaflonk, 400-teraflop, Quixxcel-inside, microplaxion-coil-induced PVP player -- wouldn't it?!

When we were kids, we preferred the refrigerator box to the refrigerator. Adults don't want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a cardboard box, however. And if for some reason the marketing wonks responsible for this gem of a piece of pap might be implying that this complex amalgam of technologies that stands 40 years beyond much of our rocket science -- the personal computer -- should work more transparently than a pop-up toaster ... I'm sorry, but any way you slice it, that's just stupid.