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Between 2004 and 2006, Geremi Adam, delighted the movie piracy scene with some of the highest quality Telesync movies ever seen. From ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ through to ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ and plenty of other titles, the work of ‘maVen’ set a very high standard for quality pirated movies.

Following an FBI investigation into ‘maVen’, his file was handed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2006. By September of the same year, Geremi Adam was arrested by police outside a Montreal theater after ‘camming’ the movies ‘How to Eat Fried Worms’ and ‘Invincible’. They seized his laptop and other equipment but later released him. A month later he was arrested again outside another theater.

Facing a $25,000 fine and six months in jail, Geremi Adam was ordered to appear in court on 30th January. Clearly unimpressed by the prospect of being locked up and/or bankrupted, he failed to appear in court and has gone on the run.

“We have a warrant and the police officers will try to find Mr. Adam,” said federal prosecutor Yacine Agnaou in a statement. “When he is found, he will be mandated to appear in court.”

Meanwhile, outside the court a demonstration was taking place by a group calling themselves ‘Hors-d-Oeuvre’ who say that ‘maVen’ is being unfairly treated and that all media should be available on the Internet for free. “Free Geremi!” they chanted in unison.

Fortunately for Adam, he committed the alleged offenses before new tough legislation was introduced to punish movie cammers caught in Canada. He will likely escape the severe punishment of 2 years in prison, a fate awaiting fellow cammer, Louis-Rene Hache. RCMP Staff Sgt. Noel St-Hilaire said: “Unfortunately at the time there was no legislation that forbid anyone from filming in a cinema. There’s not much we could do then other than issue a warning.”

Although not turning up at court is likely to inflame the situation, it’ll be interesting to see if the mounties are prepared to put any serious effort into ‘getting their man’ in this instance.

As much as I feel for him being charged with this crime, I can't help but feel this will not make his case any easier. The max sentence of 6 months is not nearly as long as a life on the run, or, being caught and ultimately facing more prison time. With that, I wish him the best and thank him for all the work he has done for the scene.

Amex Aeroplan Card Comparison

In this last installment of the Aeroplan cards I am going to take a look at the American Express cards. Amex offers three Aeroplan cards. The American Express AeroplanPlus, AeroplanPlus Gold and AeroplanPlus Platinum.

Since I have already developed the foundation for my comparison in the preceding two posts I will skip straight to the results. If you want to read the other two articles see: CIBC Aerogold & CIBC Aero Classic.

AeroplanPlus
American Express has the AeroplanPlus as their basic card. It offers 1 Aeroplan mile per dollar spent for a $60 annual fee. It also includes 2500 bonus miles for signing up plus a bunch of other extras. For more information on these extras see here. The pricing of this card falls between the CIBC classic and gold cards. The break-even point as its been calculated for the other cards is around $4730. Up to about $7000 in annual spending it is more cost efficient to get the CIBC classic, while after this point because of the increased rate of point accumulation it is better to get this card.

AeroplanPlus Gold
The next card in the Amex lineup is the AeroplanPlus Gold card. This card has a $120 annual fee putting it at the same price as the CIBC Aeroplan gold card. The structure for this card is tiered:

- 1 Aeroplan Mile for every $1 in purchases up to $10,000 annually
- 1.25 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases over $10,000 annually
- 5,000 Aeroplan Miles as a Welcome Bonus

How does it compare with the other Aeroplan cards? This card is significantly lower in value then the CIBC gold card until past $45,000 in annual spending. It gains in value over the CIBC Aeroplan classic after $15,000 and after $29,000 gains in value over the regular Amex Aeroplan card. So basically unless you do a LOT of annual spending on your credit card, this card is not worth it.

AeroplanPlus Platinum
The last card in the Amex lineup is the AeroplanPlus Platinum. This card has a substantial $499 annual fee and again a tiered structure:

- 1.25 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases up to $25,000 annually
- 1.50 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases over $25,000 annually
- 5,000 Aeroplan Miles as a Welcome Bonus

As far as I can tell, except for its added extras, this card is never worth it in terms of Aeroplan points.

Graph of the results (Click for a bigger version)


Conclusions

If I was making a choice today I would have to go with the CIBC Aerogold card. In terms of pure Aeroplan points nothing beats it. I would get it for one year and then cancel it. Because of the outstanding welcome bonus it puts the card over the top. Excluding the bonus, its a toss-up between the CIBC Aero Classic or the Amex Aeroplan Plus.

I also want to point out that all these cards offer extras that are not taken into account when determining the worth. Also, if you are going to carry a balance etc. interest rates are also not taken into account. With that good luck in your choice and hopefully this guid has helped make things a bit more clear.

Mmmm Dinner. Bacon, Cheese, Double Burger. T'was a hard time eating this beast...

CIBC Aerogold Aeroplan Visa

Let’s now continue the advantages/disadvantages of the line of Aeroplan cards. Today I will be looking at the CIBC Aerogold Visa card.

It was determined previously that one Aeroplan mile was worth between 0.83 and 1.8 cents/mile. I will be using the lower of the numbers for the calculations involved in this post.

The CIBC Aerogold Visa card has a $120 yearly fee but offers 1 mile per dollar spent and 1.5 miles per dollar at gas stations, grocery, and drug stores. So how much would you have to spend to make up this annual fee? The calculation for this will be a bit more difficult due to the almost tiered structure of the reward program.

First, let’s calculate the amount of dollars required to spend at the base rate of 1:1.

$120 * 100 cents = 12000 cents

12000 cents / 0.83 cents/mile = 14457 miles Whoa…

Since it’s a 1:1 structure, that’s $14,457 just to break even.

Read More...

CIBC Aero Classic Visa Card

At first this card seems like a decent deal considering the costs of the other Aeroplan cards on the market, but upon closer inspection for my uses it may not be worth it.

So how much is one Aeroplan mile really worth?

The easiest way to determine this is to look at some of the rewards and how much they cost in points and in real money.

I figured that gift certificates would be the easiest to compare. A 50$ gift card seems to go for 6000 points in most cases. From this using we can determine that each mile is worth only 0.83 to 1.7 cents depending on the reward.

5000 cents/6000 miles = 0.83cents/mile

Since the annual fee for this card is 29$, how much money would we have to spend to make up this amount in points?

$29 * 100cents = 2900 cents

Each mile is 0.83 cents therefore,

2900 cents / 0.83 cents/mile = 3494 miles

To collect 3494 miles using this card at the ratio of $2 to 1 mile is $6988 in annual spending to break even. For me this is probably more then I would put on Visa in a year.

Different rewards require different amounts of points. Travel rewards may be worth more per mile then straight gift cards but for ease of calculation I used the gift cards.

One site I found compared miles using flights. In their comparison they determined that each mile was 1.6 cents. This is worth twice as much as the gift cards I calculated, meaning you would only need to collect half as many miles to make it economically viable.

There is also a signup bonus of 2500 miles that will help to offset the miles required to breakeven in the first year but this will only be applied the first time you use the card. If you take into account the bonus of 2500 miles, that would mean that at 0.83 cents per mile, 2500 miles is about 20.75$ paying for a significant part of the first years fee. Because of this bonus you would only have to spend $1988 in the first year to break even.

I decided to check the flights out on my own to verify the numbers from the other website. I tried a few flights from Toronto to Vancouver but there were none of the economy class available. (Maybe because I was picking for tomorrow or very soon in the future.) I did find some when I chose further in the future. Flights to most of North America are listed at 25,000 miles. The cost of the flight to Vancouver was $443 round trip not including taxes, fees, and surcharges as I think you may have to pay this also with Aeroplan but don’t quote me on that.

Doing the quick math I get 1.772 cents per mile. Not bad. This is in line with what I had expected. Travel rewards are worth more than monetary rewards.

At 0.83 cents/mile this is equivalent to 0.415% return. 1.772 cents per mile is 0.886% return using this card. ($2:1mile)

In conclusion, unless you are going to be using the points for travel, I’d suggest getting a rewards or cash-back card. More cards analyzed soon...

I'm going to be taking some training next week at Gerrie Electric in Burlington. This will take place on Feb 5th, 2008. Hopefully this slight break from work will be both a good learning experience and fun.

Logix5000 Productivity Tools For Programmers – In this workshop experienced
programmers will learn how to take full advantage of core Logix programming
features that set it apart from traditional programmable controllers. You will take
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and programming tips to increase your productivity.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Refresh 2 is available to Beta testers through Windows Update. Experience the WU installation path for Windows Vista SP1 by following 4 simple steps and give us your feedback to improve our quality.

Notice: The following Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) builds represent RC Refresh 2 code. These builds incorporate all tested changes up to Microsoft's RC Refresh 2 date. Please note that these builds are provided for additional beta testing purposes only and may not be distributed. These builds are provided to you "as is" and are subject to change. Your right to use these builds will expire upon Microsoft's commercial release of SP1 to the public.

Systems running on Windows Vista RTM typically require two or three updates before SP1 can be installed. These updates are permanent on your Windows Vista systems. Windows Update will detect your system configuration and offer the prerequisite packages that are applicable to your system. Based on the state of your system, Windows Update will offer you all the applicable prerequisite packages and SP1 in a sequential order. For details, please see the instructions below.
If you already installed the Service Pack to your machine, you must uninstall the previous build before installing RC Refresh 2.

I also received my 2GB of ram I had RMA'd to NCIX and installed it tonight with the 2GB I already had. Vista is even snappier then before. Amazing what more RAM can do. I highly recommend getting as much ram as you can since it is so cheap right now.

Yesterday turned out to be the longest drive home from work that I have ever encountered. At first when I left the drive seemed reasonable. A small amount of snow was coming down, but nothing too drastic. After the first 5 to 10 minutes of travel, traffic was at a standstill. Long story short, it took me 3.5 hours (4:45-8:15) to get home from work. I’m not even talking a long distance, maybe 40km. The problem stemmed from people driving like idiots and spinning out on black ice or crashing into people from following too closely. It was so bad at one point I put my car in park, turned it off, and put the seat back to have a light nap for 15 minutes.

Moral of the story, for the sake of everyone else getting home at a decent time, please just slow down a little and be more careful. That extra 5 minutes you could save getting home could turn into hours in an accident and hours for all the poor people stuck behind your ignorant ass.

The week is complete. Which reminds me of the terrible driving conditions always present on the Friday rush home.

I also discovered satellite radio. No, not the kind you put in your car. I am far too cheap for that. But the free trials you can get that you can stream online. So far it's a pleasant way to speed up my day at work. (plus having unlimited emails through this website it makes it easy to sign up every 3 days )