Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide, tells us that a 2-year contract should be a reason enough not to buy the Verizon iPhone 4.

The day that Verizon gets the iPhone will be remembered as glorious by everybody who’s dropped 12 calls in a row, been taunted by meaningless signal bars and just plain had a miserable AT&T experience. But they shouldn’t buy one.

Availability seems to be a killer feature but then they tell us that a low or no-cost upgrade is more important. They probably value…new features. I think they could do a better job differentiating the positions, despite the irony. Their advice sounds like this: consumers who want stability should consider buying an iPhone now, whereas consumers who want to risk an awful experience with Apple should wait.

Time, coming from the opposite perspective, explains it like this:

Several providers are selling monthly 200-megabit data plans for $15, and T-Mobile’s cheapest plan is only $10 a month.

Combine that with a reasonable talk-messaging plan and you’ve got yourself a smartphone that’ll do just about anything you’d want—with the exception of impressing strangers because it won’t be the sleekest, newest model out there.

But if you’ve held out this long without a smartphone, you probably don’t care about impressing people, keeping up with the Joneses, or any of that guff. You probably care more about your own bottom line.

In other words, they don’t recommend an iPhone at all.

And then there’s the Daily Show:

NGO Security has a good explanation of how to create more granularity and levels for risk assessments with a Likert Scale:

You don’t need to be a math or stats-guru to use a Likert Scale, it’s actually quite simple to implement and understand (an especially good feature when explaining the rationale for security decisions to management). For risk assessment, here’s how it works.

For probability, use the following ratings:

1 – Very improbable
2 – Improbable
3 – Somewhat improbable
4 – Neither probable or improbable
5 – Somewhat probable
6 – Probable
7 – Very probable

For impact, use these ratings:

1 – Very insignificant if it happens
2 – Insignificant if it happens
3 – Somewhat insignificant if it happens
4 – Neither significant or insignificant if it happens
5 – Somewhat significant if it happens
6 – Significant if it happens
7 – Very significant if it happens

Take the rating values for a possible incident and multiple them together. For example, let’s say the potential of someone stealing office supplies at a large NGO’s HQ is probable (6) but insignificant (2). That gives the incident a value of 12.

Compare that to the potential of a staff member being abducted in a certain conflict zone. Let’s say it’s somewhat probable (5) and very significant (7) if it happens. This incident tallies up as a 35.

The higher the number, the more time and effort you should devote toward preventative and contingency measures.

That is a lot easier to read, although less entertaining, than the Lickert post at Oregon State University.

A Lickert scale is a multi-item instrument composed of items asking opinions (attitudes) on an agreement-disagreement continuum. The several items have response levels arranged horizontally. The response levels are anchored with sequential integers as well as words that assumes equal intervals. These words–strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree or disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree–are symmetrical around a neutral middle point. Likert always measured attitude by agreement or disagreement. Today the methodology is applied to other domains.

[…]

Referring to ANY ordered category item as Likert-type is a misconception. Unless it has response levels arranged horizontally, anchored with consecutive integers, anchored with words that connote even spacing, and are bivalent, the item is only an ordered-category item or sometimes a visual analog scale or a semantic differential scale.

“I can only strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree or disagree, somewhat agree, or strongly agree with you.”

Quebec, Canada has been added to the list of locations with a flock of dead birds

“All they can tell me is that it’s not avian influenza, it’s not the West Nile virus, and it’s not poison. It won’t stop. I’m finding more birds every day,” [Farmer Sylvain Turmel] said.

Turmel said that once they fall, the pigeons usually lie on the ground for an hour or two before dying.

Swedish authorities claim fireworks are to blame, while Arkansas and Louisiana suspect internal bleeding from noise trauma, Italy says it was lack of oxygen, and Japan still thinks there may be a link to avian influenza.