Hell is Full of Online Reviewers

Five categories of online reviewer.

I occasionally buy gadgets or musical things and there is some degree of comfort in researching which item to buy. These days that inevitably means some reading of user reviews. These appear on sites such as online musical supply companies, electronics companies or even Amazon or Buy.com. I have noticed that user reviews seem to fall in 5 categories and 95% or more are written by morons.

Category one: The Honeymooners = ‘Just received it and it’s brilliant!’
This is a very common category. It is only mildly annoying because sometimes the reviewers can be cute; conveying the enthusiasm felt with a new toy. But in all honesty can you really write a review for something within the first hour? Not if it has any sort of complexity.
These people need to learn that nearly everything takes time; go back to your original review after a few months (post honeymoon period) and add some more info. It will be much more valuable.

Category two: The Flamers = ‘This $10 digital camera broke after three months …’
Sometimes criticism of a product or supplier is warranted. Unfortunately however, most of the time these flames merely illustrate that the reviewer is an idiot. Typically because they are trying to use the product for something it wasn’t designed to do or The Flamer has a very unrealistic expectation of a product.
These people (in 90% plus of cases) just make themselves look rude and stupid.

Category Three: The Frustrated Smuggies = ‘People who don’t actually own nor have ever used the product’.
This category bugs the living crap out of me and it is cropping up more and more. It is reviews by people who don’t like the hype around a certain product and so don’t own one. Yet they feel compelled to write about its various features and how everyone who has one is a fool.
Those people need therapy --- Now!

Category Four: The Show off = ‘Geeks/musicians showing off’.
This one really bugs me too. It is typified by the person who buys a gadget and boasts about how they managed to load Linux on it. Another example would be a musician name dropping or hinting about the number of gigs they have etc.
Get over it! Most people with day jobs ain’t got the time - oh and get a girlfriend (it’s a very (young) male dominated area).

Category Five: The Angels = ‘Good reviews’.
I saw one once. It was from someone who had owned the device for three months listed the pros and cons and what they meant in real terms to the average user. The reviewer had spelt its, it’s, there, they’re and their correctly all the way through too. Or maybe I just dreamed it ….

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Bazza

Narnia and Newton

Last week I was in Europe and even flew out of Düsseldorf again. I am very proud to say there was no repeat of the incident from last October.

Before going to the Netherlands and Germany I stopped off in London. While I was there I did go to see the newest Narnia film (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) with my two sons; it was kinda fun. The film had the usual religious allusions, which did not get in the way of the enjoying the story. One thing though, all the baddies in the film spoke English but had Spanish accents. These were the only human people in the film (apart from our four little heroes who were very very English). At some point we learned that the baddies had been in Narnia for three generations. But even so, surely they would just speak Spanish to each other? It couldn’t possibly have been a case of using an accent, other than British or American, to mark someone out as a baddie?

*** Pixar Need To Study Elementary Physics ***

Before the film started I did find something that clanged loudly against my ‘pedant box’*. There was a commercial for the upcoming WALL-E film. At the end of the trailer WALL-E is seen moving through space using a fire extinguisher for propulsion. Overall the concept is fine. If you believe Newton’s 3 laws of motion (and if you don't I would love to hear your reasoning), then the extinguisher would exert a force and therefore the robot and extinguisher would move forward (laws one and three see here). So far so good. However, the fire-treatment propelled robot slows down as he moves across the screen. If you understand Newton’s first law then that is complete b*****ks. A body in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by a force such as gravity or resistance. So our automated red tube rider would continue on. He would not slow down as he moved through space as WALL-E does in the trailer.

The only thing that annoys me more is the way space ships or their weapons make a noise in films. Star Wars IV (the first one for us old people) took place almost entirely in space and yet was noisy as all hell! Space is a Vacuum. There is no noise in a vacuum! There’s no carrier.


The trailer for WALL-E can be seen here – the extinguisher bit is at the very end.

*All men and most women have pedant boxes. These consist of details and facts that you cannot abide being misrepresented. My Pedant box is enormous.


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Bazza

An Unkempt History

Here is a list of The History Channel’s great programs: Ice Road Truckers – Season One, er er er er well that's about it really.

However, somehow I am attracted back time and time again to watch Monster Quest, UFO hunters and any show that deals with the end of the world (December 21st 2012 according to them but we know different don’t we loyal reader?). Each show is marked by dubious, one sided research, dodgy grainy footage and freaky people who believe in whatever they are investigating. In all the shows I’ve seen not one single episode has ever resolved a mystery. It's great!

One thing does become obvious however when watching these shows. That is that anyone who wants to be known as a sea monster, UFO, ape man or end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it expert one must first eschew any formal form of hairdressing. Not only are these people insane their follicles are mad as well.

So if you want to convince me crop circles are made by UFOs then you need to get to a barbers first.

BTW since we are talking about history. We know the Black Death arrived on a Genoese trading ship into the port of Florence in the early 13th century. We also know plague is carried by black rats and transferred in the fleas who have feasted on infected black rats and then humans. But why didn’t the rats, fleas and all the humans die on the boat in the first place? Therefore alerting the Florantines (he he. I know it’s either Fiorentini or Florentians but I’ve always wanted to use that gag) that a bad thing was on board. And rats die of plague too, so why didn’t they?


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Bazza