Rogers' 7 deadly sins of wireless

I recently went through an upgrade process with Rogers, where they signed me on to a new 3 year contract in exchange for a few goodies. While they were very nice to me on the phone, let's get one thing straight, Rogers Wireless in NOT a consumer friendly company.

Lets just get this out there: all Canadian wireless carriers are bad. They do so many anti-consumer activities, it boggles the mind. Since I am a victim of Rogers Wireless, I will use them as my example of choice (but don't look so smug Bell, you've got many issues of your own)

Sin # 1: $35 "set-up" fee
Rogers tried to tell me that they would waive my so-called $35 set-up fee if I renewed with them over the phone, as though I should thank them for this. Since Rogers uses SIM cards, they literally have to do NOTHING when I start using a new phone. I could pop my SIM card into a new phone right now, and Rogers wouldn't know any different. So... what value am I getting exactly from this $35 set up fee? (And no Rogers, I am NOT going to thank you for waiving a fee you should not be charging me in the first place).

The reason they do it: Rogers slaps on the $35 activation fee to discourage you from activating with resellers like Wireless wave and The Source (i.e. little kiosks that you see all over the mall these days). They will miraculously decide to waive the fee if you register with Rogers, which Rogers like because then they don't have to pay the enormous "finders fee" to the kiosks. It's anti-competition, plain and simple.

Consumer friendly solution: No set-up fee

Sin # 2: Locking phones
If you buy a phone through Rogers, it only works with Rogers (unless you may some shady guy in the back of a discount computer store $50 to unlock your phone).

Why they do it: This doesn't even make any sense, because Rogers is the only country wide GSM carrier in Canada, so their phones couldn't work on Telus or Bell even if you wanted them too. So by locking their phones, all Rogers is doing is saying: "Don't move to another country and try to take your phone with you", which is kind of stupid really. One area where it is slightly justified is in the high end phones, where if you were to purchase the phone and then cancel it right away and pay the $200 cancellation penalty, you would actually still be paying less than the sticker price for the device, so this kind of practice is prevented.

Consumer Friendly Solution: Don't lock the phone.

Sin # 3: You have to be a fortune teller
We can buy a 100 minute plan, or a 200 minute plan, etc... and then when we go OVER, we have to pay at a higher rate, and when we go UNDER, we don't get our money back nor do the minutes carry over to the next month. I'm really not sure how they get away with this, because in any other industry, the more you buy, the less you pay per unit, period.

The reason they do it: They know you can't see the future, so they are trying to get you to buy as many minutes as possible, and then scare you into using as few as possible, widening their margins but making consumers angry. Furthermore, having a number of different confusing plans adds the illusion of "choice" to the industry.

Consumer friendly solution: Get rid of this whole "plan" nonsense entirely. Charge based exclusively on usage, where the price decreases the more you use. For example:

• 10 cents for the first 100 minutes
• 7 cents for the next 400 minutes
• 5 cents every minute thereafter

This is simple, understandable, consistent, and makes sense. If plans must continue to exist, make the unused minutes from one month transferable to the next.

Sin # 4: They keep your usage a secret
Rogers is pretty good at telling you at the end of the month how much you have to pay them, just like the utilities do. However, all of the information is kept digitally and accessible at a moments notice, but there is no way to find this information out. How close am I to my 100 minute limit? Have I used to much data? Stories about of people who find out that they used $300 worth of data but had no idea they were doing so. The technology is there to do it, but Rogers refuses.

The Reason they do it: If you use less then your allocated time, they make extra money on you. If you use more, you pay through the nose. Either way, unless you guess the exact amount of time you've used on your plan, you lose, Rogers wins.

Consumer friendly solution: Be able to look up your usage online at any time, and send an SMS message alert to the phone when it's on it's last 20 minutes of airtime for the month.

Sin # 5: Charging for voice-mail AND airtime
If I pay Rogers $5 a month to give me voicemail (they only allow 5 messages), then the only way to retrieve my messages is to call a specified number and spend more of my airtime minutes to check the message. They are double dipping, and completely ripping off the consumer in the process.

The Reason they do it: Oligopolistic greed. If there was real competition, this wouldn't happen.

Consumer friendly solution: Charge EITHER a fixed rate for voicemail, or offer voicemail for free and charge for airtime, don't do both.

Sin # 6: Per minute billing
Lets say the following conversation occurs:

• Jim calls me: "I'm going to see Spiderman, wanna come, its at 7." "Sure, I'll see you at the theatre". Total call time: 38 seconds
  
• Jim calls me again: "I made a mistake, it's at 6:30, better hurry". "Ok, I'm just finishing dinner but I'll be there." Total call time: 22 seconds.
• I call Jim: "I'm going to be late, please pick up a ticket for me". "Sure, no prob man". Total call time: 15 seconds.

Now, the total conversation time was 1 minute and 15 seconds, but Rogers would charge you for 3 minutes. This adds up very fast if you are in the habit of making quick calls. Rogers needs to go back to school to learn to add.

The reason they do it: As if it wasn't difficult enough already to guess how many minutes you've used, it becomes even more difficult when the number of minutes you use is actually more than the amount of time you've talked on the phone! And the less know you know... the more Rogers makes off of you.

Consumer friendly solution: Per-second billing

Sin # 7: Crazy expensive Data Rates
Thomas Purves has posted an interesting chart showing how obscenely expensive our cell phone plans in Canada are, especially when it comes to data rates:

Rogers is 39 times more expensive than New Zealand... need I say more?

The reason the do it: Oligopolistic greed. If there was real competition, this couldn't happen.

Consumer Friendly Solution: Charge a data rate that somebody making under $200,000 a year can afford, then maybe people would start using data services.


Well... Rogers wireless actually has more than 7 sins, but it messes up my blog title if I make more... so I'm going to pretend that it's just seven...

Sin # 7 + 1: Crappy phones:
The good phones are in Asia/Europe, and don't arrive here until years later.

Why they do it: Unlike overseas, the carriers control the distribution channels and bundle phones with plans, taking away your choice. This allows them to wait until the prices for phones are cheaper (for Rogers, not for you). This also prevents you from getting all kind of nifty features that might prevent Rogers from stealing more of your money. An excellent example is Wi-Fi access. Why pay for internet service through the cell network, when you might have access to a free Wi-Fi network at work, home or a coffee shop? If you could do this, less $$$ for Rogers, even though phones like this are available overseas.

Consumer Friendly Solution: Allow phone companies to sell directly to consumers without going through Rogers.


Sound Off: What ticks you off about our lovely Canadian wireless carriers?

The September of iMac?

Apple is now the epitome of cool, but we all know that they are still a small player in the computer market with something like 10% - 15% of the installed computer base. Call it a hunch, but I think that 2007 will be Apple's true breakout year, and that the tipping point will happen in September.

The reasons are simple:

• The iPod is absurdly popular
• The iPhone is absurdly cool (even though it can't reach even close to the popularity levels of the iPod because of it's $500 price tag), and it's coolness will rub off on the Mac brand as a whole
• I (a person who, addicted to the flexibility of the PC, previously swore I would never get a mac, and actively poked fun at those who owned one) am actually thinking about getting a Mac, because I am just plain tired of my PC not working as it should, so I could infer that a lot of other people are thinking the same thing.
• You can now run Windows applications on a Mac, so compatibility has become a non-issue.
  
• September is when School starts.

I would be very curious to walk down a dorm hallway, and see how many new iMacs are in the student dorms, I would put my money on 40% - 60% of all new computers in the hallways being Macs... and if there is a major shift in the dorm rooms, it's only a matter of time before everybody else falls in line.

How to get a Blackberry Curve in Canada

Do you want to get the sleek new Blackberry Curve, but you're Canadian so you can't find it? The curve so far is only available on GSM networks, and Rogers is the only GSM carrier. However, if you go looking for it on the Rogers website list of available blackberries, as of the day of this writing you will not be able to find it.

HOWEVER, that does not mean that they won't sell you one! If you go to the RIM homepage and visit their Blackberry Curve homepage and dig around a little bit, you will find a link that says "where to buy", and will then lead you to a list of providers. Lo and behold, Rogers is on the list! Click through and you will be brought to what seems like a secret page where you can buy the Blackberry Curve from Rogers.

Last Friday I was speaking with a Rogers rep over the phone, and he had never heard of the Curve. I found this quite surprising, as it is the hot new kid on the block. I directed him towards the RIM homepage, where he went and looked at the specs and proclaimed "Wow, that's a pretty neat device, I'm glad you showed me this sir". While looking at the page, I found the "where to buy" link, and proceeded to show the Rogers rep that I could indeed but the Curve from them. The whole process took about an hour, but my Shiny new Blackberry curve arrived in the mail today. Given that you can't even find it on the Rogers homepage, and the reps don't seem to even know it exists, I'm betting that I'm one of the first in Canada (other than RIM employees) to own one. Cool.

Will it blend?

My wife recently posted a blog entry about a little "will it blend" adventure that we had (we mistook a screw for a blueberry and tried to make it into a smoothie). So, this little adventure got me visiting one of my favorite sites, www.willitblend.com, where they successfully blend everything from an iPod to a golf club.

They have recently topped themselves with "will it return" where they try to return a blended video camera. It's one of the finer pieces of home video I've seen in a long time.

Apparently Best Buy made them pull the video from the willitblend.com website. But of course, censorship or attempts to manage your corporate image too tightly only serve to make what your trying to hide even more popular in today's internet age, so here is the video a-la youtube.

Video Camera Part 1 - Will it blend?


Video Camera Part 2 - Will it return?

Top 7 Bad Songs ... and how they fell

There are enduring bands whose music will last forever like the Beatles, U2, Rolling Stones, Nirvana etc... Then there are some bands that reach such an undeserved level of popularity so fast that when the listening public finally realized they've been duped, the music and band disappears forever.

These songs were incredibly popular, but will never be played on oldies stations 30 years from now. Their artists reached such heights, but then disappeared suddenly. Ask a DJ to play it today, and they'll look at you like you've been on a construction site without your hard-hat a few too many times. Here are my top seven:

7. Mmm Bop - Hansen
Kind of Jackson-5-ish, but as soon as one of these boppers hit puberty, it was game over.


6. The Bad Touch (Do it like the do it on Discovery Channel) - Bloodhound Gang
This song dominated the air waves for a very brief period of time with it's one line joke:

You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let''s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel

Unfortunately, they repeat this refrain 8 times throughout the song, so if it was funny the first time you heard the line, the joke was old by the end of the song. If you heard the song 5 times, you've heard the joke 40 times and would probably just switch the radio station.

5. Jump - Kriss kross
These two kids inspired teenage boys everywhere to wear their jeans backwards...

...who gave up on the idea after trying to use a urinal.

4. If you want to be my lover - Spice Girls
I truly have yet to meet anybody who actually liked Spice Girls, and am convinced that some marketing company just tried to spend tons of money to get them on the radio in hopes of duping the listening public that they had good music.

Their career ended the moment the trailer came out for their "Spice World" movie.


3. Can't touch this - MC Hammer
I think I can put my finger on the moment MC Hammer lost all credibility... see video below



It's so bad it's good.

2. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
I think I also found out when Vanilla Ice lost it...



So bad it's good.

1. Hanging Tough - NKOTB (New Kids on the Block)
Ever notice that the acronym for these guys has just as many syllables as the full name? (that is, unless you pronounce it N-KOT-B). Ever girl who was a teen or pre-teen can still name off all five of these guys.

As for when it was over for these gjuys, i'm noticing a pattern here. Note to self: if I ever become a rock star, don't sign a Saturday morning cartoon deal.



So bad... it's just bad.


What are your top "once great/really bad" songs?

Absurd Navigation

You may or may not be aware that Microsoft has released a new version of Office (Office 2007) that dramatically alters the user interface. It is supposed to make it easier to find buried options.

I run MS Outlook 2003 at work, and although I haven't tried 2007 yet, the need for it smacked me in the face today when I tried to do something as simple as uninstall a simple little add-on. I had to go through SEVEN menus. The menu names were as follows:

Tools
-> Options
-> Other
-> General
-> Advanced Options
-> Add-ons

The really funny thing about this menu path is that NONE of the sub menu contain descriptive titles... options, other, general, advanced options!?! Who came up with this ridiculous scheme?

A note to software designers: You should never use a non-descriptive word such as "other" or "general" for a menu, because it just becomes a dumping ground for the many features you haven't thought about how to structure. It will always end in absurdity.

What "Google Level" are you?

In case you haven't noticed, Google seems is gradually taking over the Internet. Therefore, if you're not with Google, you're falling behind the times. Also, the company has managed to garner an almost religious following and commitment to its products.

Many people think of Google as just search, but in reality they offer many many more services. I've noticed that people adopt certain sets of Google services in waves (i.e. you spend a few days "discovering" a certain set of Google's offerings).

People start by learning a certain "set" of products, then wait for a while, then eventually, they will learn another set of products. These products have a natural grouping, and there is a natural progression to learning and using them.

What "Google level" are you?


1. Seeker
You've just discovered the Internet. You are probably pretty old if these are the only features you know about.

• Search, images

2. Dabbler
You have experimented and had fun with some of Google's most accessible offerings.

• News, Maps, Earth, Finance, Scholar, Picassa

3. Disciple
As you use Google you have started discovering some very nifty, useful and fun features. It has started changing the way you work on the computer and on the Internet.

• gMail, Blogger, Personalized home page, Desktop
  
• Nifty search bar tricks
• FireFox (not actually Google... but usually goes hand in hand with Google)

4. Committed
Google is at the center of all your online activities. Even if there are better services available for some things, you are likely to use the Google version anyways... because it's Google.

• Calendar, Talk
  
• Reader, Web Alerts, News Alerts
• Page Creator, Groups,Notebook
• Web Accelerator, Google extensions for Firefox

5. Monk
You and Google are one. You don't need a personal hard drive anymore, your entire life is online. You probably work on multiple computers and can reformat your computer on a whim.

• Docs & Spreadsheets
• Google Apps for your domain

6. Evangelist
You believe and promote Google, and try to make more Googlers. You actively participate and contribute to the Google community.

• gBase, API programming, Google 3D, Code Search

Also of note...

Quirky
This category of tools doesn't really fall into the ordered list. You may use them anywhere along the continuum, but you may not be using these even at the highest levels of Google enlightenment.

• Orkut, Music trends, Transit, SMS, Search by location

Tiffany's Falls, frozen photo album

Did you know that Hamilton has over 70 waterfalls? I paid a visit to one of the this weekend (Tiffany's Falls) to take some frozen waterfall pictures. Click on the picture below to go to the full album.

Tiffany's Falls

Enjoy!

Death is killing stories

Why is it that the big event in "stories" these days is "who's gonna die?". Somehow, we have become pre-occupied with who might die in today's stories, that the rest of the story takes a sidestep.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but normally in life we don't know ahead of time when somebody is going to die. So, why reveal these kind of things ahead of time (even if we don't know who) in books and on TV?

Let's take three examples and explore; Harry Potter, Lost and Heroes.

Author J.K. Rowling said two characters will die in the last installment of her boy wizard series, and she hinted Harry Potter might not survive, either. (CBS News)

The Potter books have become the absolute worst in making the entire story about who is going to die. In the last three books, Rowling revealed before-hand that key characters were going to die, then the discussion boards swirled trying to figure out who was going to die. Now, in the 7th and final chapter she reveals that two characters will die. My opinion of the previous book (Half-blood prince) is that it's sole purpose was to set up the death of one key character, which could have been accomplished in maybe 2 chapters, rendering the remainder of the book unnecessary.

The TV series Lost is also a big offender. Every time a so-called "major" character is killed off the TV stations run a major advertising campaign telling you ahead of time that "somebody will die". Then, it ends up being either a minor character or a character that was so annoying that you won't miss them anyway (I'm thinking of you Shannon).

This week, the show Heroes did the same thing. The preview at the end revealed that "somebody will die", so now I'm supposed wait in suspense all week trying to guess who is going to die.

I've heard talk radio pick up these stories as if they are big events, so I guess the publicity stunt works well.

Sorry, I'm not going to play along. I really wish that they could just go ahead and kill the character without telling me ahead of time. Often they end up killing a minor character and I think, "they were making a such a big deal that guy?", and end up a disappointed viewer.

Writers please, just go ahead and kill the character warning me ahead of time, and I will be a happier viewer/reader.

Viacom vs. YouTube , bold business move, I like it.

Media companies have long hated the way that YouTube profits from their copyrighted material. However, for the past year all they have done is yelp and complain, and occasionally take down clips. This was self defeating of course, because these clips actually promoted and popularized a lot of shows.

Viacom is the first company to finally fight back with a real solution: Their are making their own youTube.

Viacom moves on without YouTube | CNET News.com: "The company recently began offering so-called embed code that allows fans of popular programs such as the The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to post clips to their MySpace.com pages or blogs. That embed code duplicates one of the more popular features of YouTube: the ability to easily post videos on other Web sites and blogs."

While the site cannot possible be as popular as YouTube, it is very forward thinking of Viacom. In the absence of a deal with YouTube, this is the best business decision you could make. Kudos to you.

YouTube is missing out on this opportunity. They have the chance to form strong partnerships with big media companies, by hosting copyrighted content and sharing ad revenues.

Unfortunately, both sides lose out on this scenario. Content would certainly be more valuable on YouTube than on the Comedy Central site, and YouTube doesn't get to share any revenue.

Music industry fires back at Apple

Steve Jobs has asked the big media companies to remove the requirement for DRM (Digital Rights Management) licencing from music downloaded from iTunes and other online music stores. This is basically the technology that makes music purchased from iTunes only playable on iPods, limits the number of copies, limits the number of computers it can be played on, etc...

Jobs said eliminating such restrictions would open up the online music marketplace.

This is probably true. The interesting thing about downloading music legally online is that it is actually less valuable than pirated MP3s, because you can play MP3s anywhere, anytime. As such, it can reasonably be inferred that there are people who would be willing to purchase music from iTunes (myself included), but have no interest in owneingcrippled music. If there were no protection, more people may actually be willing to pay for the convenience that iTunes provides.

The Music industry struck back, declaring Apple's hypocrisy in that Apple is not willing to licence out it's technology to other media players or music devices. Fair enough. Steve Jobs would argue differently however:

globeandmail.com: Music industry fires back at Apple: "In his essay, Jobs said Apple is against licensing 'FairPlay' as an alternative method for making iTunes accessible to all portable players, because making the technology widely available would make it easier for hackers to figure out how to bypass it."

Come on Steve, you're a good guy and all, but this is not a valid argument. The argument breaks down in that hackers have already broken Fairplay, rendering your point moot. In fact, you don't even need to be a hacker to break it, all you have to do is burn iTunes music onto a CD and then rip it back onto your computer as an MP3. You lose a little bit of quality in the process, but few people really care.

Please Steve, don't treat your customers like idiots, all we ask is a little bit of intellectual integrity. The labels are right, play fair and licence out your DRM to others.

And to the music industry, Steve also has a good point about opening up the market. It is a fallicy (ad hominum) to say his argument is wrong simply because of Apple's hypocrisy. Get with it and get rid of DRM.

You're both right, and you're both wrong. Little children, shake hands, say your sorry and get on with it, or I'll send you to your rooms.

Finally, a good wiki summary

For a week or two now, I have been trying to explore and understand "enterprise-wikis". It is quite easy to find high-level philisophical discussions about the importance of wiki adoption at the enterprise level, but it is HARD to find honest reviews about various wikis.

The reason this is frustrating is because I am trying to choose an enterprise wiki for deployment at my place of work. Heck, it's even challenging to find a list of different wikis and what they are good for.

Finally, I found a good article here. It is written from a non-geek perspective, and he gives an accurate summary of the key criteria is a good enterprise wiki:

• is beautiful
• is easy to use
• integrates with our corporate authentication system
• allows users to "email to a page"
• has rock solid WYSIWYG editing (including tables!!)
• can absorb Microsoft Word's messy HTML without barfing
• has great management tools for pruning and gardening the wiki
• allows for attachments of files
• includes great threaded conversations on a page
• is hosted but can also be used in an appliance inside the firewall
• has granular user & group security privileges (ideally tied into Active Directory)

My list of criteria is pretty much exactly the same, and I thought that this criteria was pretty obvious and self explanatory. Lo and behold, when I started exploring different wikis (socialtext, confluence, PBWiki, stikipad, zoho), and found that that all fell short on many of these criteria. The biggest offence was usually against the "rock solid WYSIWYG" (not all WYSIWYG editors are created equal) and "great management tools for pruning and gardeing the wiki".

He argues that confluence is the best, and based on what I have observed I would tend to agree. However, even confluence still fails in the two key criteria I listed in the table above. Yes, it's got WYSIWYG, but it's table layout functionality is very inflexible, and until you've figured things out it's not intuitive where you are saving pages.

"Incent" is not a word

While doing my MBA, there were many occasions on which I would be writing a report that included an element about how important it was to incent your employees properly. I was always confused when MS Word's spellchecker flagged the word, and was convinced that the dictionary was wrong because we used the word so often in class.

Today I learn that according to Paul Brians' book, "Common Errors in English Usage", the term "incent" is not a verb, or even a word for that matter.

Business folks sometimes use “incent” to mean “create an incentive,” but it’s not standard English. “Incentivize” is even more widely used, but strikes many people as an ugly substitute for “encourage.”

I suppose I should have known this. However, this brings up a philosophical question; if the word is "commonly" used and understood, then is it really an error at all?

iPhone lawsuit, don't believe a word

Make no mistake about it, the iPhone from Apple is the quintessential in cool technology. This much is undisputed.

However, Apple has an interesting situation on their hands with a lawsuit coming from Cisco, who actually owns the trademark to the name "iPhone". Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs of Apple came right out and decided to call his phone the iPhone as well, despite not owning the trademark.

Gutsy Steve, gutsy.

However, I don't buy it. You can bet your bottom dollar that this is a marketing stunt.

Lets look at the facts:

• Apple has been in "negotiations" with Cisco for a few years over the iPhone trademark.
• Cisco released an "iPhone" only two months before the launch of Apple's iPhone, even though they have owned the trademark for many years.
• Apparently, The companies left the negotiating table at 8 p.m. the night before the iPhone announcement, with only a few points left to negotiate.

Lets analyze this situation for a moment, what does each party have a stake here?

• The iPhone trademark is not really worth much to Cisco as their iPhone is only a marginal side business. There are plenty of other "i____" products that are knock-offs of the iPod line, and Cisco's product will fall in that category of products in consumers' minds. Over the long term, the iPhone name means nothing to Cisco.
  
• The iPhone would be nice to have for Apple, but Apple could call it the iPumpkinHead and still not lose any sales.

My skepticism arises from the fact that the current situation is not in favor of anybody, despite the parties having ample time to negotiate. Furthermore, Cisco's "explanation" of why negotiations broke down doesn't hold water:

Fundamentally we wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future. In our view, the network provides the basis to make this happen—it provides the foundation of innovation that allows converged devices to deliver the services that consumers want. Our goal was to take that to the next level by facilitating collaboration with Apple. And we wanted to make sure to differentiate the brands in a way that could work for both companies and not confuse people, since our products combine both web access and voice telephony. That’s it. Openness and clarity. (Cisco Blog)

Apple is NOTORIOUS for being NOT open. They build their entire platform around a core philosophy of non-interoperability with their hardware/software mode operandi.

In other words, to ask Apple for interoperability in exchange for a silly name is just
absurd. It's not negotiating in good faith, and Cisco knows it.

Here's what I think actually happened. Cisco is trying to extort an absurd amount of money out of Apple for the iPhone name. Apple, knowing that the name is worth nothing to anybody but Apple, called Cisco's bluff. Then, Cisco realized that there is more to gain by riding on the Marketing coattails of Apple, and agreed to go into a drawn out, public war with Apple over the name.

This costs Apple nothing, and Cisco get the kind of advertising that money can't even buy.

I think they have already come to a deal. They will just publicly "pretend" to reach a settlement the day before the Apple iPhone release.

Am I cynical? Maybe... but this is the only scenario that makes any business sense, and at the end of the day it's still all business.

Movie Review : Army of Darkness

Rating: Worth my while
Reason: Army of darkness is one of those movies with a small cult following. It is the third installment of the "Evil Dead" series, and was directed and written by Sam Raimi (Same director as Spiderman and Spiderman II). I have to say, I think that Army of Darkness is a great movie. Now, it is very campy, but it does campy so well. At the start, our hero "Ash" gets his hand replaced with a chainsaw, a la Freddy Kruger claw style. Who has a chainsaw for a hand!?

I chuckle to myself just thinking about it.

Furthermore, Ash has this wicked "don't mess with me, even if you're a demon possessed she-bat" aura about him. I can't think of another movie where the hero has so much attitude. He would pretty much spit in the face of the devil himself if he had the chance (You'll understand if you see the movie). Army of darkness won an Oscar for best special effects long ago, and boy, it must have been a long time ago. But, the "oldness" of the special effects kind of adds to the alure of the movie. Technically, I suppose it is a horror movie, but is screams "don't take me seriously" so loudly that you'll certainly being doing a lot more laughing than screaming. As such, "Army of Darkness" was worth my few hours and a bag of popcorn.

Alternate Rating: Made me dumber
Reason: If you can't handle extreme intentional cheesiness, then you're not going to like this movie. It's not cheesy in the same way as say, Batman & Robin (let us never speak of that movie again), but more so in an almost Monty Python type of way. As such, there will be a lot of people who won't get this one, and that's just fine. To each their own.

The merit of a cat

Well, my girlfriend asked me to write about "the merit of a cat". So, here goes my best shot. Let it be known that I am not a "cat person". So, I don't have the same "appreciation" that some do. So here is the merit of a cat, from my perspective.

• Cat's merit being not as fun as dogs. They're like... The high-maintenance teeny-boppers with ten mirrors in their room. Dogs on the other hand, are like the class clown, always ready to entertain.
  
  
• Cat's merit being thrown off low roofs by young children. Sorry, it had to be said.
  
  
• Cat's merit cleaning a house of mice.
  
  
• Cat's merit being good source material for the "Puss'n'Boots" character in Shrek 2 (coughing up hairballs, licking themselves, "kitty kat eyes")
  
  
• Cats merit being cool, as in "Cool Kat", but it has to begin with K, not C. I guess that makes "Kit Kat" bars cool by default. But it is kind of a self proclaimed coolness... I'm not sure if its "real coolness".
  
  
• Cat's do merit making kind of a cool purring effect... when they decide to sneak into your room and sleep on your head.

There you have it, "the merit of a cat". Comments are welcome. :)

Movie rating system

Rating systems for movies have long been a beef of mine. Do you use a four star system, five star system, ten point system, thumbs system, it's all over the map. And what does two stars mean anyways? The time for these ambiguous rating systems has come to an end, and so I propose a new, definitive rating system as follows.

Movies can be broken into 5 categories:

• Spectacular
• Worth my while
• Passes the time
• disappointing
• Made me dumber

There are a few rules to reviewing a movie based on this system:

1. They are not numbered, but they are ordinal.
2. A movie cannot fall between categories.
3. When presenting an opinion along with a movie rating, one must also present one alternate rating, that describes why another person may rank it differently.

To illustrate, here is a sample movie review abstract for TROY

RATING: Disappointing
REASON: Troy, plain and simple, is an avenue for the female population to drool over Brad Pitt and his 2 second naked scene. Half of the movie is spent simply holding the camera on Brad's face with his hair blowing in the wind. Brad's character "Achilles" is not well developed, which ask to fact that this movie is simply all about this pretty boy's presence. In fact, despite the fact that the movie has two love stories (one of which is Helen of Troy, a love-story that brought down a kingdom), neither of the love stories are believable or compelling. The only thing that saves this movie is that the war story and execution is actually fairly well done. This movie does not simply build up to one final battle like most movies do, but rather plays out the events of a war over the entire course of the film, working the human elements into the battles nicely.

ALTERNATE RATING: Spectacular
REASON: Girls will go googily. Visit rotten tomatoes, and you will see that the masses are divided 50/50 on this issue. Interestingly enough, fresh tomatoes were usually given by female reviewers, and rotten ones by male reviewers.

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Hello there

This is my first post. My name is Tim. I have alot of interesting stuff about a trip to Togo West Africa that I took at www.berezny.com/tim/Togo. Check it out.