If I were to wager, I would bet that the Congresscritters who blather on about "limited government" will prefer to let Level 3 et al upcharge and/or QoS route Netflix network packets, than face their rural constituents' ire at the USPS no longer routing packages down their country roads.

Wall Street is a fickle mistress, and cares overmuch what other people are saying about you.

The initial bounce was probably due to their CEO saying something -- anything -- in response to the customer anger over the price hikes that have caused their stock price to go from ~300 to ~150 over the last three months. Now some 'analysts' are weighing in with much the same "Uhmmm, what?" that Netflix's customers are.

Exactly. I don't doubt that In The Future, we'll all be watching movies and TV programs primarily via internet stream. I already do.

But Netflix needs to face reality about their current streaming offerings... I like Muay Thai boxing movies, sci-fi b-flicks, and 30-year-old TV series as much as the next guy (that is, I do, but a little goes a long way), but most people want to see something that's in the "Top 100" too (I do). Currently, Netflix streaming doesn't doesn't offer that, but Netflix streaming+DVD does... as does Amazon, iTunes, Hulu+, etc.

The only thing that would make this make sense is if Netflix, by divorcing their DVD delivery and streaming businesses, will get better selection and terms from movie studios and other content holders for their streaming service.

> However, it's pretty obvious that he got the job mainly because of it.

What evidence do you have for this? Aside from Kundra being Indian and Obama being other than "not a single drop" white, I mean.

I blame the coarsening of popular culture. Back in those days, all the music on the radio was well-written with thoughtful and meaningful lyrics, rather unlike the music of today, which is just a load of fucken crap.

"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or critically injured, and those that weren't are living in worse conditions than under Saddam Hussein's rule, but I'm 10% underwater on the suburban McMansion I bought in 2006.... I'm the victim I tell ya!"

And buy gold coins to bury in your backyard!

We're not in Great Depression II. We're not even as bad off as in the 1970's. Lots of people are really hurting economically, through little or no fault of their own, and they do need help. I agree that the "too big to fail" banks are culpable, but the only way lots of people in the US are going to starve is if the "de-regulate everything" and "drown government in a bathtub" folks get their way.

Note that the Israelis don't do racial profiling, so "too PC" doesn't really enter into it (though as noted below ability to scale the process to meet US traffic does). Granted, in that part of the world, selecting for "brown skinned" gets you an indistinct, useless set. But they're also apparently smart enough to realize that there are white/black/yellow-skinned people who want to martyr themselves, too.

Asking the parents' advice ahead of time is great advice. You might have thought that Harry Potter was a story promoting values of loyalty and courage to do the right thing, or that Kiki's Delivery Service was about perseverance and respect for elders. You didn't realize you were trying to convert their kids to witchcraft, or that any music that doesn't talk about Jesus is actually Satan's siren song.

It would be nice if it went both ways. See, while I'm sensitive enough not to gift the Golden Compass trilogy, if I say anything about the picture book of Bible Stories featuring the crucifixion and narrative explaining that the Flood was God's way of drowning all the "wicked people," then I'm the dick, because they're just trying to save my kid's soul.

But yeah, C.S. Lewis is probably something we can all agree on.

My first job out of college many years ago was as a tech writer. I got 'synergized' into also being responsible for producing marketing materials (because I had a Mac, and had figured out how to use Adobe Illustrator and Quark and etc.). It seemed potentially fun at first. I read a few books on graphic design, and pestered a couple of buddies of mine where were employed as actual designers for tips and critiques of my first efforts, which they thought pretty impressive.

The people at work, however, hated it. I learned that at my company, no one else was a tech writer, but EVERYONE was a budding artist, whose many opinions on aesthetics HAD to be listened to. I took to doing three comps for any project, one of which was always the butt-ugliest, most garish, negative-space-ignoring piece of crap I could muster. Guess which one the President and Director of Marketing -always- picked? Everyone thought I was a genius.

Fortunately for you, people like that lady rarely can be bothered to actually go vote, whereas people like this lady take it as their Holy Mission to get to the polls for every single general, primary, or school board election.

Perhaps if we all didn't get so wrapped up in the moral panics and anger points politicians use to manipulate us, you and I could elect people who'd actually do something sane about things like IP laws and their enforcement... you know, "stuff that matters."

What? You think they weren't already sharing the info with select multi-national conglomerates whose CEOs say "exxxxcellent!" while tenting their fingertips?

Meanwhile, they launched some half-baked plan to rewrite the whole thing in Java, while people were bailing from the site out of frustration.

The half-baked plan was to ditch the Java code and rewrite it in PHP, when it's pretty clear the main issue was the way they were representing hierarchical relationships in a SQL relational database (it certainly can be done, but it's easily done poorly).

Either way, it's an excellent example of desperate devs grasping at the straw of "language 'x' sucks, let's rewrite in language 'y'!" and then being disappointed when the switch doesn't spray magick pixie dust curing all their problems.

Perhaps there are better charts available, but from what I see, the cliff-drop in P&G preceded the big action in the USD vs Yen by a good couple hours.

The problem with getting warrants is that they take time to get.

My brother-in-law is a homicide detective. According to him, he can get a warrant in under 30 minutes, if it's important.

We'll be presented with all manner of 24-esque ticking-time-bomb-in-the-school-basement scenarios to illustrate why and when this warrant-less search power would be used. In reality, it will be used to dredge up dirt on status-quo-threatening politicians and political activists that will then be mysteriously leaked to the press.