I'm planning to get a DVD player this holiday season that supports Netflix. I wonder how this will impact all those that already have devices (game systems, tvs, etc) that support netflix. I just went through watching all 7 seasons of Trailer Park Boys via Netflix watching them on my wife's laptop and via a windows VM on my computer. It was great! Even if I could have figured out how to copy them via Netflix, I wouldn't have. I mean, I know I can go out and download them via torrents, but as long as they are available on Netflix, why should I?

I've always wondered about this kind of thing from way back when MP3s emerged for music. If they would make the content cheap and available, we wouldn't have this rabid need to hoarde it. Now there is no guarantee that Netflix will always have what I want to see, and I do have to pay a subscription fee... but as long as I do and they have what I want to watch, I don't feel the need to have a local copy. Once someone gets it, and content is available all the time for a reasonable subscription price, I don't think people would be so hell-bent on retaining local copies of stuff. Some will, but I think they put way too much focus on preventing that instead of making it unnecessary.

You're right. But he didn't say those things. He said a lot more than that, in bizarre and excruciating detail. This isn't some off-the-cuff email he sent, this was his official communication! Is anyone supposed to seriously remember all of that stuff? It is funny and ridiculous. Don't think so? Check this out and see if you get a chuckle: http://thestallmandialogues.com/ . RMS basically needs to lighten up. I feel bad for the guy, sounds like he's incapable of enjoying himself.

One day something set me off, and I was wondering how the name "cron" was chosen. Wikipedia credited Brian Kernighan with creating cron, so I took a chance and emailed him. He responded and said he thought it was derived from chronos.. but that he didn't write it and didn't know why Wikipedia credited him. He said it was probably Ken (Thompson), Dennis, or Bob Morris.

So I emailed Ken and Dennis at what email addresses I could find for them, I couldn't find Bob's email.

Dennis emailed me back and said that Steve Johnson was the author of the Unix cron, and that he thought the name had to do with chronology. Ken emailed me back and said he thought he wrote it, and that the name had to do with time.

I was really surprised these guys emailed me back about something so trivial, but I was still pretty excited about getting responses. The answers weren't completely definitive, but interesting none the less. Something that we use every day, and nobody seems to be quite sure who wrote it.

Interesting... I found their CS department to be OK.. but I got my BS-CS back in '93 at SIU-C. Maybe the department has changed, I know the landscape of CS certainly has. But these researchers are from SIU-E, and I don't even think they had a CS department back then. I don't think you can discount the research entirely based on where it came from.

They need DRM because they signed the deal with Microsoft to use Silverlight. Perhaps they had to agree to use some kind of DRM in order to get the rights to stream the content? I honestly don't think there's any real technical reason.

I agree with your points. How many companies would say "well, you guys spoke up and we hear you."?
I thought the move was dumb, but I also thought that there had to be some reason behind it. Execs and higher-ups in a company actually have a hard job. They have to figure out how to CONTINUE to make a company successful. Quick math on internet forums don't show the whole picture of a company. Netflix was a great value, and as their streaming content grew it was super-fantastic. But I can see how there are costs associated with that. Something has to pay for those costs. Maybe they were working on thin margins to get that customer base, and it was becoming a financial nightmare to keep streaming and mail DVDs separate. Maybe it was the Silverlight deal that is costing them. We don't have the whole picture. It's not clear if this was really an "innovation" move or something that seemed to make sense on the company side. I certainly wouldn't expect someone to lose their job over it.... after all, this wasn't one person's idea, I'm sure they had lots of discussions about it. Although I bet the people who didn't like it are enjoying a big bowl of "I told you so". :)

They tried something, it didn't work out, they yanked it. I understand people getting irritated and asking questions - if we didn't, Netflix would have gone forward with it and it would have sucked for us. But in the end - it's entertainment. People shouldn't get all frothing-at-the-mouth over it. The people who swear to never use Netflix again because of this need to chill out. It's amazing to me the money people will waste in their lives and get mentally stuck on some other things that don't cost all that much.

I hear you on the Linux client, it's a pain. But, with the various systems that play Netflix (TVs, DVD players, game systems) and Windows machines/laptops, I don't see how they can justify doing a Linux client. Their problem was locking in with Silverlight.

Even if this were true (which I don't believe is the case), it doesn't matter. A dead company doesn't mean anything if another takes its place. A dead company *sounds* bad, just like losing your job. But many a CEO or other very wealthy person has lost their job and made million upon millions of dollars doing so. Many a company has failed and died, with no real ill-effects done to those at the top of it.

I don't know if I'd call Mark Zuckerberg *evil* per se...

Really? I've actually NEVER heard this. Please cite something credible.

Is it television programming, or anything that comes out of that box with the moving pictures?

My daughter loved watching Signing Time, which we got as a gift, and we ended up buying the whole series. It teaches them sign language. She was signing before she could talk. My other two kids followed suit. We found it greatly beneficial.

Now the programming they watch (@ 2, 4, and 6) isn't quite up to that standard of educational learning, but Nick Jr (formerly Noggin), PBS Sprout, PBS, and a couple of other channels offer what I consider to be great programming.

It's like saying the internet is bad because of goatse (or facebook, for that matter).

Look, those were some of the first players in the digital music realm. I remember posting on Slashdot back in 2001 or so (sorry, not going to go find it) about how the music industry was stupid for not embracing the digital music revolution instead of fighting it. I know I wasn't the only one.

My idea was that instead of suing Napster et al to kill digital music they should have started selling digital content. They should have started building their digital library, offer a CD buring service in stores where customers could burn whatever songs/albums they wanted with a reasonable pricing system. (.50 per song for anything 1 year old, .25 up to 5 years old, .10 older than 5 years). Build a menu of pre-made playlists for purchase (like staff picks in bookstores). People wouldn't mind buying songs even multiple times if the price was right. Offer them the SERVICE of music.

I thought that this could be done in the dying record stores. Burn them audio CDs, or MP3s to CDs (DVDs were a ways off, as were mainstream MP3 players). SELL MP3 players / USB drives and let people load them up with the purchase. But do it in a way where you lay down the infrastructure to keep the business. That could easily be built into an online service too. Harness the excitement that people have around music instead of trying to so strictly control it.

They chose the dinosaur way, then Apple comes along and changed the game with the iPod and iTunes (neither of which I've ever used). The 'music industry' could have really done so much with digital music to actually advance things, but they let other people do that.

I just had a guy here doing a repair on my floor. He almost left his phone, and we got to talking about them. He was complaining that his iPhone was starting to flake out and that he was going to have to get a new one. I showed him my phone, which is about 5 years old and works fine, and that my wife and I share minutes and we spend about $60 a month between us. He said he spends something like $200 a month on his.

So you buy an expensive phone and pay $200 a month to use it, and when it breaks you just go get another one.

He was also complaining about his iPad2 he bought, how hard it was to use, and how it didn't do stuff like it showed in the commercials.

We've really turned into a society of very obedient consumers.

I live in Arizona, we don't change our time with daylight savings time.
I work with people all over the country, and they thing we're strange for not shifting our clocks, it always comes up when the time changes.
I just say "We're strange? YOU'RE the ones who think you can CHANGE TIME!" :)

or he was being EXTREMELY sarcastic. ;)

THANK YOU!!!!

I got a job out of college at Moto in the cellular division back in 1993. I bought up some shares in their employee stock purchase plan. I left the company after about 5 years, I just wanted to broaden my experience. When I left, the stock had done a 3-1 split and was around 35 a share. Then the bottom fell out, it got down to about $4 at one point I think. Recently MOT split into MSI and MMI (mobility). Right about now, after the stock jumped after this announcement, I have just about broken even. Not bad for an 18 year investement.