Netflix
CNN has an interesting article, Netflix's best customers penalized which states that Netflix uses a "throttling" scheme so that customers who rent movies at a high-frequency (e.g. 18 per month) get slower service and they are less likely to receive popular movies. This is done because each movie costs Netflix money (e.g. 78 cents in postage), but the customer pays a flat monthly rate for "unlimited" movies. As a matter of principle this sounds wrong, so I can see why people are upset. Personally, I've never had any issues with Netflix and think they are one of the best things since sliced bread.
I watched Matchstick Men last night. It's a drama starring Nicholas Cage as an obsessive-compulsive con artist who finds out that he has a teenage daughter that he's never met. It was pretty good and is the kind of movie that I like, but I also felt that the movie was a little slow to develop (especially at the start). Hence, I'll judge it at 3 stars.
4 comments:
I saw an article about Netflicks this week about the issue. I don't use the service myself, I upgraded my cable service to have high speed internet and so I do not typically rent movies. I don't approve of Netflick's "throddling" policy, I would think that there is such a small group of people who are going through movies so fast, I would think they would be happy to be getting those movies back so quickly, to get them to other subscribers. I understand the cost of postage and whatnot, but honestly, how large can that group of subscribers be who turn around movies so fast? I understand making a profit, but I also understand not alienating your customers. No customers...no profits...
Anyway Ryan, I hope you are well. Did you decide what you were planning on doing about school and Europe?
I'm kind of indentured until August and applications for fall 2007 aren't due until the fall, so school is only at the back of my mind. (It's kind of late to apply for this fall). So right now it's more of a question of whether or not I would be happier in another area (of the company).
This week I worked kind of long hours and last week I was on-call (and it was rough), so I haven't thought about planning my vacation recently. I'm kind of learning towards the Eastern Europe option though.
I would have thought you would be thinking about vacation every spare moment you had! Why was being on call so bad last week? As opposed to any other time you are on call? If it makes you feel any better, I had been planning a week off from work next month and I got called for jury duty. Granted, I may go and find out that they don't need me or want me, but either way, it ruins my vacation. I had been planning on leaving Friday night after work to fly up to Seattle for a week, but now it looks like I can't go. :-( At least the plane ticket wasn't a total loss, it was a refundable ticket, but Im bummed out all the same, and I have no idea when I will be able to take another vacation.
Sorry. I know venting to a perfect stranger isn't polite. But if you can deal with being on call, I'm sure you can deal with little ol' me venting...:-)
Anyway, I do hope things for you improve and that you are able to get in some time to plan that trip. From the way things sound, you are going to need a bit of time off, at least to recharge and restore your sanity.
My pager filled up with pages twice. I think I got something like 47 pages. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I was woken up at least twice in the middle of the night and I spent all of Friday evening at work (which made for 3 hours in the middle of the night + 13 hours at work + commute = really long day). So overall, that is at least twice as many pages than what I got I worked on other stuff.
It's kind of hard to explain without the context, but a lot of the stuff was either not page-worthy (either stupid things or thing I couldn't really do much about it) or enough work that I couldn't completely solve it before the next page. (I'm still working on fixing some of that stuff). So there is a certain amount of frustration (helplessness?!) too.
I like watching crime dramas on TV. Somehow I doubt jury duty is that glamourous though! ;-)
Venting is fine. Sometimes I do it too. :-)
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