Crank is a movie that stars Jason Statham, the lead actor from The Transporter movies. It also stars Amy Smart as his girlfriend, who I swear I know from somewhere before. But looking at her resume on IMDB, I haven't seen anything she's been in... Maybe just her name sounds familiar.

Anyways...

The movie has an interesting plot: a hitman is poisoned in his sleep, and only has an hour or two to live. He quickly discovers that adrenaline can prolong his life, so while trying to exact his revenge he keeps having to find ways to pump up his adrenaline.

OK, let's start with the good bits of this movie.

* It was funny. There were several places where the audience broke out laughing. So for an action movie, some genuinely funny moments is a nice twist. 

* The cinematography was innovative. If you want to see an example of bad cinematography, take a look at Bourne Identity 2 - the camera was jumpy, and the action sequences were blurry. I thought Crank had some interesting camera shots. In one scene, Statham runs down an alley while one of his killers is on the phone with him. He actually runs past a video projection of that person on the phone. I thought that was a cool technique I hadn't seen before.

* It delivers on the action. So I went to this movie hoping to see some fights and car chases, and that's what I got.

Now let's be honest and talk about the bad bits too:

* Some plot holes. Well, let's be honest. The guy is given a poison that should kill him within an hour. Even though he discovers that when his heart is pumping and his adrenaline is running, it reduces the effect of the poison... there were plenty of places in the movie where his adrenaline should be lower. He's sitting in a restaurant with his girlfriend having lunch --- why isn't he keeled over on the floor from the effects of this poison? Lots of driving, lots of cab rides... The times when the poison affected him were not consistent...

* The poison itself. If you're going a kill a guy, kill him. Shoot him in the head or something. But why inject him with poison and leave a DVD movie for him to learn about his impending fate? Now I guess some bad guys have a huge ego, and love torturing people a little bit or rubbing it in someone's face that they are about to die. The movie never really explains the "why" of it's central plot theme.

(Well, I guess there wouldn't be a movie if they killed him in his sleep... that's a factor.)

Anyways, this is a decent movie. See it on DVD. Or download it. 6.5 out of 10.

I wonder if anyone has done this type of analysis on the show "Deal or No Deal".

If you haven't seen it, the premise of the show is that there are 26 suitcases with various dollar amounts in side, from $0.01 to $1,000,000. The contestant picks 1 case at the beginning, and the dollar amount inside is what they're playing for. They don't get to see this amount til the end.

Then they eliminate each of the cases a few at a time, and the banker makes them offers to get them to give up "their" case. If the contestant is eliminating low dollar cases, the offer can be high. But if the contestant eliminates high dollar cases, the offer is low.

So the first thing you have to notice is that the contestant can only win one of two amounts: the amount that is in their case (determined at the start of the game), and the amount offered by the banker. The amounts in unpicked cases are not available to the player.

The other thing to notice is that (presumably) the banker has all the information while the player has none. The banker knows the dollar amount in the players chosen case, and has a computer system to tell them the statistical average amount outstanding. And this goes into how much to offer the player.

But the banker doesn't care about the statistical average - he knows what the player stands to win, he knows what's in the case. And he controls the offers. So if the player only has $10,000 in his case, the banker would be stupid to ever offer the player more than that to get them to quit.

But of course the banker needs to keep up an appearance of fairness. His offer has to be within a reasonable limit of the statistical average. For instance, if there are 5 amounts left on the board, $1,000  $100,000 $250,000 and $500,000 and the banker offers $800, it will be a bit obvious to the player and the audience what the player has in his case.

But that doesn't mean that the banker has to be at or above the average. So in the above instance, a player with $1,000 in his chosen case might get an offer of $70,000, while a player with $500,000 in his case might get an offer of $200,000.

Now this is where I'd love to see real life examples of this. Can we get copies of past shows, and see where two players both have the same amounts left and different offers? Then we can see how the offer can give the player a clue as to what is in there case.

And if anyone knows where I can find more details on how the banker calculates the offer, put a link in the comments.

A few years ago, I used PureTracks.com for my purchased music, before I owned an iPod. Music on that service was relatively expensive, at $1.29 - $1.49 per track. I paid $14.99 for a whole album on there once.

Once I got an iPod, I turned to iTunes for my purchased music.

So I have a bucket full of PureTracks DRM music on my system that I have not listened to in a long time. I just opened up Windows Media Player to check, and I have not played music using Windows Media Player since March 2005!

Now, for the first time, someone has cracked the Windows Media Player license scheme. It can, as far as I can tell, extract the decryption key from Windows Media Player itself. Once it has that, it can decrypt the music permanently.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=114916

I know this is illegal under the DMCA (copyright circumvention), but I am not American so it does not apply to me. Tonight I decrypted dozens of WMA files, and imported it into iTunes. I can now listen to these songs again, for the first time in 1.5 years.

I usually don't do this. Heck, I still own 100's of MB of songs purchased and locked up under iTunes DRM. But to have one media player, and to listen to songs on my one portable device of choice (iPod) - that has to be my right as a consumer. I cannot fathom a law or a judge that would say that even though I purchased this music, I somehow can't play it on my computer or my music player. It's not stealing - it's Fair Use!

And in an ironic twist: The first time I tried running the program against my WMA files, it failed. So I ran Windows Media Player myself, and tried to play the music, and Windows Media Player said I had to download a mandatory update in order to continue. Once I had done that, FairUse4WM worked! Thank goodness for security updates!

On September 11, 2001, looking at the tragedy that was unfolding live on CNN, I was dumbstruck. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It hadn't occurred to me until that day that this type of terrorism could ever happen - using a plane as a missile. And as each subsequent piece of news trickled in that morning and afternoon, I couldn't believe it could get any worse. Yet with each passing hour it still did.

Of course - I was glued to CNN all day and all night watchnig replay after replay. Every once and a while, some new camcorder video would come in, and you could see the plane hit the tower from another angle. There was the smoke and ash that filled the streets. I think horrific is the only appropriate word for what happened that day...

And here we are 5 years later. And oh how the world has changed.

Anyways, my prayers go out to the 9/11 victims and their families. This really is one of the great tragedies of human history.

A few years back (well, many years now actually)... Microsoft gave me a free copy of Visual Studio 6 Professional Edition for taking and passing a MCSD beta exam.

At the time, I was amazed because I think the software retailed for like $1000. It was like winning $1000 in a lottery - well, not exactly but still... free expensive software.

Nowdays, Microsoft offers their Visual Studio Express products free. I am using Express to assist with a big Open Source development project from home, and it's incredible that it is free. In fact, they may have lost a sale of the retail version of Visual Studio 2005 to me, because I don't need it.

Yesterday I heard that Borland is offering it's Turbo products free - Turbo C#, Turbo Delphi, Turbo C++. Wow again. So if I wasn't using Express already, I would definitely try Turbo C#.

Java people have Eclipse, which I hear is really good. Are there any other really good free development tools out there? Let me know.

Sorry, unconverted.

There are only three circumstances where employees should have the right to unionize:

* Low wage jobs, which I define to be less than $50,000 per year

* High risk jobs, where health and safety needs to be monitored

* Abusive employers, as decided by the Labour Relations Board

I also think employers should be given another weapon to fight a strike. The ability to fire or replace any number of employees without cause with only standard severance.

That is, once your employees are on strike, you can then decide it is a good time to reorganize your work force, letting go some of your least productive workers and hiring some replacements.

So, you go on strike, you risk losing your job because if your employer can find someone better, they will.

If not, you're safe.

Ah, September the 4th. The holiday known as Labour Day up in Canada.

I made the mistake of coming in to work today. I have a big meeting tomorrow that I have to prepare for. But outside my office window a parade is going on. Yes, an actual parade. The unions are parading in celebration. Celebrating what? I don't know. Labour I guess. Celebrating cushy union jobs for life.

The music is nice though. Steel bands. Singers. Thousands and thousands of people marching. I think an hour of this might convert me to their cause.