[CharlesS]

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/07/01/amazonco.shtml

To play the Knee-Jerk Contrarian game, this is what you need to do:

1. Go to Amazon.com and look up your favorite book, movie, music, etc.

2. Click on Customer Reviews.

3. Set it to show Lowest Rating First.

4. Have fun!

Or, you could just follow the link above, where he's dug up a lot of funny negative reviews for you. Some of my personal favorites:

1984

While cultural pundits try to convince you that some literature is better than other literature, the truth is that all art is relative to individial tastes. Thus, it doesn't make any sense to think that a novel like this one is really any better than say, Michael Crichton or Stephen King. Aesthetic standards can't be grounded.

Thus, don't listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between "serious" works of literature like this one and allegedly "lesser" novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are "better" than any others, and the concept of a "great novel" is an intellectual hoax. This book isn't as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!

The Odyssey

Though Fitzgerald is a competent translator of Homer's Spike-Lee influenced [Aeolian], the disappointing truth is you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Homer would be best left outside the circle of his fellow Greeks Sophocles and Plato and re-establish himself as a writer for SNL or maybe Married with Children. Were Homer alive today hew would no doubt be plotting out the next Buffy the Vampire Slayer storyboard as we speak. Those who know the original Greek can feel the harsh dissonance of Homer's words echoing in Fitzgerald. English has blunted some of the edges, but the overall horrific effect of Homer's screeches and moans is too evil to killed, yet too sinister to be contemplated.

2001: A Space Odyssey

I don't understand half the movie and in order to understand even half of it you have to watch 2010 you'd have to be high to like this movie or very stupid fittingly my roomate liked it because he is both maybe thats the reason I don't understand this movie because i'm not some stupid stoner man this movie is horrible and if i was a POW and someone made me watch this movie as toucher i'd tell them anything cause this movie is tourture the only thing good about it is the special effects and that song The Blue Danube thats it don't waste your time or money unless you run a POW camp then you'd probably like this movie remember jsut guard your eyes or your tourchering yourself to man this movie sucks

Lawrence of Arabia

I bought this DVD as a way to show off my new DVD player to my family. I had seen the movie several times in the theater, and knew its bright colors would be beautiful on my TV screen.

To my horror, I saw that Columbia had seen fit to alter a masterpiece. Yes, the film came complete with those horrific black bars at the top and bottom of my screen, which obscured about half of the picture. I've seen those bars on the "artsy" videos on TV, and I sometimes enjoy them. But this is a classic work of art! You don't try to make it "hip" and "relevant" with modern touches. It would be like adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa.

Until Columbia drops the act and releases "Lawrence of Arabia" without those bars, letting us see all of the picture, stay away.

[Axo1ot1]

That first dude is just an outrageous relativist. That can be an attractive stance to take under certain circumstances, but based on the way he crafted his argument, I say he's a fukcin retard.

[nforcer]

The thing that gets me about Amazon reviews is that a lot of them are a bunch of crap. Check out some unreleased product, like Halo 2 for instance. The game has not even been released, yet it has somehow garnered 286 reviews, ranging from the ever so enlightening "This game was cool, until i played it. Yeah then everything pretty much went down hill from there, similar to a bomb, ya know?" to reviews that practically say "This game is the second coming of Jesus. And I played it. And it's awesome".

But I would not limit this to just Amazon. Versiontracker reviews are similar with very little useful content for the most part. It's typically either "This app is great, 5 stars!" or something like "I'm too stupid to read the system requirements and cannot run this app, 0 stars". Very little useful criticism or reports that are worth reading.

It's just a problem with letting anyone "review" a product. It lets every dumbass kid on the planet post whatever he wants.

There should be some kind of user-moderation for feedback, like Slashdot comments. Let users provide feedback on various comments, and give them keywords to describe what kind of comment it is. That way I could browse at +4 and wade thru the plethora of crap and actually find useful feedback and solutions for something that interested me. Of course this system is not perfect either (I wonder how many people would make a bunch of accounts to mod up their stupid comments), but it's far better than the current crap most sites employ now.

[cszar2001]

Try some reviews of Kurosawas movies:

"Why did he have to use black and white?"
"The Special Effects sucked"
and my favorite:
"Not enough explosions".

[voyageur]

One of the best Amazon reviews I've come across is this one for the well-known children's book, The Story of Ping:

PING! The magic duck!

Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.

The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand, choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).

The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around the river before being received by another host (another boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.

If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.

Problems With This Book

As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults. There is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the command line options well enough, some review of them seems to be in order. Likewise, in a book solely about Ping, I would have expected a more detailed overview of the ICMP packet structure.

But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante's seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API ("Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein."), without shaking their head with deep understanding. But I digress.

[cszar2001]

Originally posted by voyageur:
One of the best Amazon reviews I've come across is this one for the well-known children's book, The Story of Ping:

LOL.

[MacGorilla]

Originally posted by voyageur:
One of the best Amazon reviews I've come across is this one for the well-known children's book, The Story of Ping:

Awesome!

[ReggieX]

Amazon's user-posted reviews are generally stupid, especially when you get people "reviewing" something that's not even out yet. They need some serious pruning.

[PacHead]

Until Columbia drops the act and releases "Lawrence of Arabia" without those bars, letting us see all of the picture, stay away.

Ok, I officially declare whoever wrote this to be an idiot. The truth is exactly the opposite. Without those black bars, one is indeed missing a significant portion of the picture and movie.

Widescreen is way better than the pan & scan junk that exists.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by PacHead:
Until Columbia drops the act and releases "Lawrence of Arabia" without those bars, letting us see all of the picture, stay away.

Ok, I officially declare whoever wrote this to be an idiot. The truth is exactly the opposite. Without those black bars, one is indeed missing a significant portion of the picture and movie.

Widescreen is way better than the pan & scan junk that exists.

Many films are actually filmed 4:3 and masked afterwards, so the TV version actually shows *more* picture than the widescreen version.

That's the reason you so often see mic booms and things in the upper region of the picture, depending on whether the director had unmasked TV presentation in mind when filming.

Kubrick's last few films were supposedly optimized simultaneously for 4:3 and masked widescreen.

-s*

[PacHead]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Many films are actually filmed 4:3 and masked afterwards, so the TV version actually shows *more* picture than the widescreen version.

That's the reason you so often see mic booms and things in the upper region of the picture, depending on whether the director had unmasked TV presentation in mind when filming.

Kubrick's last few films were supposedly optimized simultaneously for 4:3 and masked widescreen.

-s*

The best thing is when TV channels show both versions simultaneously. I remember when HBO was first showing Band of brothers.

They were showing it on two different channels at the exact same time. One was the normal version, and the other was the widescreen or letterbox version.

[scaught]

Originally posted by PacHead:
Until Columbia drops the act and releases "Lawrence of Arabia" without those bars, letting us see all of the picture, stay away.

Ok, I officially declare whoever wrote this to be an idiot. The truth is exactly the opposite. Without those black bars, one is indeed missing a significant portion of the picture and movie.

Widescreen is way better than the pan & scan junk that exists.

whoever wrote that is joking though. that seems to be the theme of this thread and the chosen quotes.

[ReggieX]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Many films are actually filmed 4:3 and masked afterwards, so the TV version actually shows *more* picture than the widescreen version.

Very few things are shot 4:3 (1.33), the most common film ratios are 1.66 and 1.85.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by voyageur:
One of the best Amazon reviews I've come across is this one for the well-known children's book, The Story of Ping:

Ha ha, hilarious!

[voyageur]

Yeah, that reviewer's a genius. Hope he posts more.

[DeathToWindows]

QED. Humans are idiotic.