Day: July 23, 2004

Is NetFlix Doomed?

I can’t remember where I read it, but there was an excellent essay on someone’s blog about how NetFlix is likely doomed to fail in competition with Blockbuster and other companies that are going to undercut it on price and drive its profitability to unsustainable levels. According to this analysis, NetFlix has failed miserably to create any sort of community on its website that might add enough value to persuade customers to abandon it for slightly lower prices.

I couldn’t agree more. I am a heavy NetFlix user. I’m subscribed to the $34/month plan so I can have 5 DVDs out at a time, and I’m tempted by the $50/month plan that allows 8 DVDs out at a time. I’ve given several people 3 months subscriptions as gifts. I currently have 496 DVDs in my NetFlix queue.

But there’s really nothing very special about NetFlix to keep me around if I can get a better deal elsewhere. Why can’t I make my NetFlix queue public like an Amazon wish list? Why can’t I create a “Brian’s Video Recommendations” where I could extoll the work of 20th century autuer Gerry Anderson and the life affirming effects of Supermarionation? There are so many cool features that NetFlix could do — as Amazon has — that would make it more than just a place to rent DVDs.

But it hasn’t, and so it is just a place to rent DVDs. (hell, it’s almost impossible to contact NetFlix itself with any questions — it’s like the company is run by former NSA refugees who are loathe to admit its very existence). There’s nothing else worthwhile there to keep me from going elsewhere if I can save a few bucks.

I’m also kind of annoyed that the NetFlix queue tops out at 500 DVDs — mine is always nearly maxed out. This makes no sense even if all NetFlix had was movies on DVD. It really makes no sense when it includes TV shows on DVD. Just adding all the discs for Space 1999 takes up 16 slots (about 80 percent of my queue is taken up by television series DVDs).

OverDrive Arena

GearWerks Games and Testors have partnered to create a new combat driving tabletop game, OverDrive Arena. Apparently this is a second edition of the game — the first used 1/24 scale models, but this one features 1/42 scale cars that will be put out by Testors (or you can modify your own 1/42 scale models, too). Excellent. As far as I’m concerned the world can never have enough car combat games.

Piracy Plus

Interesting. It’s well known that piracy of intellectual property is a major problem in Asian countries, but I wasn’t aware that part of the piracy occasionally involves making wholesale editorial changes to the product. For example, here is an article about pirating of Bill Clinton’s autobiography in China,

Translators are recruited by the counterfeiters to take out whole sections and even add others to make them more appealing.

Out went: “I was concerned about China’s continued suppression of basic freedoms” and “I went to bed thinking that China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open.”

In came: “She (Hillary) was as beautiful as a princess. I told her my name is Big Watermelon” and “China is a mysterious and unique place.”

I guess it depends on the meaning of “translation.”

Source:

Fake Clinton Biography. Sky News, July 21, 2004.

The Media Lied and People Died?

Among the smaller tidbits in the 9/11 Commission’s report are a couple of shots the commission takes at the media in general and at the New York Times in particular for downplaying terrorism and Osama Bin Laden as a threat prior to 9/11. At one point, for example, the report notes,

It is hard now to recapture the conventional wisdom before 9/11. For example, a New York Times article in April 1999 sought to debunk claims that Bin Laden was a terrorist leader, with the headline ‘U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden Directed Attacks.'”

I was curious, so I looked up that story on Lexis/Nexis. It includes paragraphs like this,

In their war against Mr. bin Laden, American officials portray him as the world’s most dangerous terrorist. But reporters for The New York Times and the PBS program “Frontline,” working in cooperation, have found him to be less a commander of terrorists than an inspiration for them.

Enemies and supporters, from members of the Saudi opposition to present and former American intelligence officials, say he may not be as globally powerful as some American officials have asserted. But his message and aims have more resonance among Muslims around the world than has been understood here.

The 9/11 report also includes a quote from an unidentified Saudi Arabian individual who complains that the American media’s anti-Saudi(!?) bias fuels terrorist groups like Al Qaeada. But the 1999 New York Times story shows exactly the sort of cavalier attitude that the Saudi took (and continue to take IMO) toward Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden,

On May 31, 1996, four Saudis were beheaded after confessing to bombing a Saudi National Guard post in Riyadh and killing five Americans. All told their interrogators that they had received Mr. bin Laden’s communiques. Only 25 days later, a truck bomb tore through a military post in Dhahran, killing 19 American soldiers.

Mr. bin Laden was blamed by American officials for instigating the attacks. But no known evidence implicates him, and the Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Nayef ibn Abdel Aziz, has absolved him. “Maybe there are people who adopt his ideas,” Prince Nayef said. “He does not constitute any security problem to us.”

The interesting thing in light of what the report says about Sandy Berger — that he rejected no less than four separate attempts to grab Bin Laden based on narrow legalistic grounds — is that the Times story is also focused on excessively legalistic matters. After all, the only thing the United States could prove with absolute certainty was that Bin Laden had fled to Sudan and then Afghanistan, declared war on the United States, was busy training terrorists in camps, and regularly issued calls for terrorists to strike against American targets as well as praised successful such strikes.

Pretty weak case, huh?

Source:

U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden Directed Attacks. Tim Weiner, New York Times, April 13, 1999.