Finally, some justice.

After seeing celebrity after celebrity acquitted of serious crimes they were so obviously guilty of, one jury has finally come to their senses.

Orenthal James Simpson has been found GUILTY of all 12 charges filed against him with regard to the attempted armed robbery and forced confinement of two sports memorabilia dealers, as was Clarence Stewart. Apparently, having actual recordings of the crimes helped the jury make up their minds this time.

Thirteen years ago, OJ managed to escape justice in the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, because of an incompetent judge who allowed the media to run amok in his courtroom; a prosecution team that called racist cops to the stand and a legal defense team infamous for twisting the meaning of any piece of evidence, no matter how plain its actual meaning is.

With Johnny Cochrane and Robert Kardashian (yes...Kim's real daddy) no longer available to pull a miracle out their backsides (and the wool over the jury's eyes) , Mr. Simpson is now looking at spending the rest of his natural life behind bars.

Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman can finally rest, as can their families

Well, our one day experiment is over. Now is the time that we agreed to list our top five suggestions to the designers of the new TV.com. Here are mine:

1- Conditional to any future redesign, a Beta-version of the changes should be made available that can be tested by the USERS, not some focus group. If you wish, it can be released to the top 100 users of the site since they are the most active members and are responsible for most of the content of the site. That way, proper feedback and suggestions can be offered by the people who will be using the new design. This is not the first time a major revamp of the system was unveiled (or should I say "unleashed") and it was discovered to have a huge assortment of major and minor problems, many of which had never been addressed.

2- Any changes to be implemented should be tested THOUROUGHLY prior to being put online. The number of glitches in TV.com version 3.0 was absurd and would have been easily detected by a three year old had anyone bothered to give the new site a test drive. This suggestion is different from my first in that in the previous suggestion, the issue of user interface was the problem. In this one, the issue is problems like a "HELP" button that takes you to a blank screen, or a WYSIWYG editor that block all attempts at posting in forums or blogs. That's not twitchy or uncomfortable to use: that's BROKEN!

3- REPAIR THE EPISODE AND CAST SUBMISSION SYSTEM! This site is a television information database. In order to maintain that database, users need to be able to submit information and the editors need to be able to moderate it. At present (two weeks after the new version became active), editors still have to add the main and recurring stars of a show one at a time. After each addition, the entire cast list has to be re-imported. To make things even clumsier, the cast editing screen seems to show the same cast member several times on the same list. We're never quite sure which one we are supposed to edit.

4- Restore the number of "My tracked blogs" on the user's profile page. Version 2.0 used less screen space, yet included the 10 most recent tracked blogs. The new version offers only 4. In addition, the user's most recent blogs are merely previews and are plain text only on the profile page. They used to be complete from beginning to end and included all various font sizes, colors and photos. This "new and improved" version offers all of the flair of a newspaper "help wanted" section. The blogs are a means of expression for the users. Reducing them to plain text is just a slap in the face. In addition, the progress and rating bars should be restored to their previous form. On profile pages, the level progress bar has been done away with entirely and the ratings bar on shows, episodes and people is a monocolored block. Heaven forbid that there should be any color or visual appeal to the site. In order to attract traffic to the site, it MUST have some degree of visual appeal. In that regard, the new version is a HUGE leap backward.

5- Either change the background / default font combination or allow us to customize it. The brilliant white background and the faded grey text are EXTREMELY difficult on the eyes and have induced headaches and migraines in hundreds if not thousands of users. At the very least, introduce some damned colors besides blue!

I've noticed that on many people's blogs, a concern about not being able to see beyond the first page of comments is still plaguing a lot of TV.com users. Although the glitch has not yet been fixed, there is a way to mitigate the inconvenience (other than going to MovieTome or GameSpot).

All you need to do is go into your "Prefs" and pull up your settings on the "Boards" submenu. Change your "comments per page" to 50 and click "Save Changes". You'll no longer be resticted to only the first 10 comments while viewing them on TV.com.

While we're on the subject of viewing things on TV.com, I sincerely hope that as many of you as possible will choose to support tomorrow's 24 hour blackout. It is our way to let the executives in charge of this site at CBS realize how much damage their new version has done to the spirit of this community. It's important that we be heard. Otherwise, we'll be little more than drones generating money for them by visiting their site and doing their work for them.

SIMPLY LOGGING OUT FOR THE DAY IS NOT ENOUGH!

Visiting as an anonymous user is still a visit and will register on their site traffic counters. Only with reduced traffic to their site will their advertising revenues suffer and their attention be drawn. The blackout period will be from BEFORE midnight to AFTER midnight in your time zone. DO NOT HAVE THIS SITE APPEAR ON YOUR MONITOR BETWEEN 00:00HRS AND 23:59HRS ON SEPTEMBER 30! It will count as a visit and defeat the purpose of this protest.

ALL CNET SITES MUST BE AVOIDED!

CNET (owned by CBS) bases its advertising rates on the overall visits to their sites as well as the individual ones. If we avoid TV.com only to visit GameSpot or MP3.com to check on our blogs or our mailboxes, we will have accomplished NOTHING!

SPREAD THE WORD!

It isn't too late to convince others to join in. Insert the following into your "URL for current icon" field in your "Prefs" page.

http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd330/tjaman/tvdark.jpg

Let's have as many people as possible show their displeasure with this poorly planned and horribly malfunctioning new site by displaying this avatar.

Many thanks again to Glenn for organizing this protest and to TJ for designing the "Gone Dark" avatars and the "Blackout" banners. You've both done some great work.

Please do not forget to post your top 5 suggestions as to what you would like to see done to improve this site. Many people have done so already, but it's important that we get our requests to the people who will hopefully be listening after the blackout is over.

See all of you in October!