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Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

Or do you have a completely dynamic site (ie. catalog)?

We face the opposite problem. We can't get google to crawl us enough. Out of perhaps 50-75k pages we'd like them to index, they only index about 1300. We're working on it tho!

Yeah this does seem pointless. What's so hard about returning a movie to the rental place? And with things like netflix, you don't even need to go to a physical store. Just mail it.

Good god, man, it's called a membership.

Yes, the filmmakers and the studio are out there to do the Academy push. And there's a big corellary between the marketing by a studio and the eventual winners.

I think most people would agree that we'd hope the folks in the Academy would be pretty well versed in the year's movies. Not that have to see everything (I think it would be cruel and unusual to force everyone to sit through Gigli or House of the Dead) but you'd think they could watch like the top 30 regarded movies of the year, with or without studio hype.

And, no, I don't expect everyone to shell out the hundreds of bucks I spend a year on movies. I'm adult enough to know that such an idea is stupid.

I do however think people would really get a kick out of a lot of these movies they're missing out on. It's a shame when there's something good out there but its so low on the radar that it goes unnoticed. Also its compounded by the theaters demanding high first and second week returns on movies now. So the local AMC might have a screen set aside for art movies but whatever's showing might get cut to make up for additional screens for the next Big Blockbuster.

And that's the problem: popular opinion is cursed by the fact that it is directly catered to. The studio and theater systems don't/cant' waste time on films building word of mouth over months. So instead most movies drift through distribution unseen by the mainstream. It might be the Best Picture of the year, but who would know when three guys and the director saw the only screening in some Porno Theater in Queens?

In fact that's why I post crap like this whole thread. So people would be modivated to maybe seeing something that missed their district. Shit, Netflix is a revolution! Folks no longer are hampered by what the local chain or Blockbuster decides to show them. Folks reading this thread can queue up City of God and get it shipped to their house when it's finally released on DVD. They could be in BFN, Idaho and be exposed to a whole world of expression. I think that's pretty fucking sweet.

Sure, there is nothing wrong with them if they are completely uninterested in doing so. But it breaks my heart when folks aren't given the chance to experience all of this cool shit (or, even worse, assume that people like myself are just indicitive of indie and foreign movie fans, and the whole lot are a bunch of... what did that guy say? That I think I'm better than 99% of the people here with my condesending attitude).

Maybe I'm not the best advocate for art film. By the responses to this post I can see that I probably have come off as the same sort of Debian Linux uberzealot that gives /. a bad name (too bad since I'm one of those too). It sucks since there's some really cool stuff out there that I think people would be blown away by.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Netflix or Greencine. These are examples of a business model (video rentals) adapted to suit the technology (internet). I dont know what their earnings are but I thought it was a cool idea when I heard of it, and I like it even more since I've been using it.

Also in The Best of Resfest: Vol. 2, which is available for rental from Netflix.

After blockbuster drove the two local mom & pops out, I switched to Netflix and haven't looked back.

anyone ever consider the kind of characters that get jobs as santa in the mall? what kind of person wants to be paid to have a bunch of rugrats sit on his lap all day?

all i want for christmas is the ignorance to be gone from the world, for tech support to always know my answers, and for my freakin' slackware server to run centericq and connect to ALL the protocols ALL the time. i want a toilet that works all the time, neighbors that dont play Robert Palmer from 2AM-4AM as loud as possible, and friends who call me even when they DONT have questions about computers. i want a boyfriend who will ALWAYS be sensitive and caring, and who will rub my feet when i get home from work, and children that will cook dinner and wait on me hand and foot.and for the supermarket workers to stop striking so that life can return to normal.

realizing i'll never have it because i dont believe in santa clause is possibly one of the most depressing things ever.

gifts i'm buying for others this year:
Netflix
Personal Electronics, DVDs, and Music
Cheap toys for the relatives kids that i hate toys for my kid

Someone recently happened to mention that NetFlix is probably the largest bandwidth provider these days.

WebFlix? I hope you meant NetFlix....

oops, actually the right movie was :

Revolution OS

Join us now and share the software, you'll be free ... hackers!!! you'll be free!!

FSF Song

check out : E-Dreams for another rockin' performance of that song.

Having said that, suppose that Apple created an online method to transfer ownership of arbitrary files. I can pretty much 100% guarantee that within two weeks you'll see a service where:

• You register for the service and upload a list of the songs you own.
• The service gives you up to n items of your choice at one time, and transfers ownership to you.
• The service arbitrarily pulls up to n items out of your iTunes library at a time, and the service's software automatically transfers your ownership to them.
• All for only $9.95 per month!

Basically, someone will create a license server so that up to q people can listen to a given song at one time, and the requested music will flow from owner to owner as people select songs from a playlist and click "play".

In other words, you'd have Netflix, but with the participants providing the trading material.

While I still believe that Apple should allow you to transfer your music as you see fit, I can kind of see why they may not want to make it easy or cheap.

Netflix carries this movie...

Netflix is a DVD rental site and thus has more to due with the MPAA than the RIAA. OneInEveryCrowd seems to have their *AA's confused.

Stan Lee is a pure story-teller. The Marvel universe reflects his disinterest with technobobbles.

Check out this to get Stan Lee's take on science.

Excelsior!
-jimbo

For $3-5, you get to spend all evening downloading a file. When you get it, you have 30 days to play it before it self-destructs. And it self-destructs 24 hours after you start playing it. And you have to watch it on your computer, and the computer must be a PC running Windows.

On the other hand, video rental stores charge you the same $3-5, and you usually have at least three days to watch it.

Or pay-per-view cable which costs the same $3-5 for 24 hours, but doesn't involve any download time.

Or NetFlix where a $20/mo fee lets you watch your rentals for as long as you want.

Can someone tell me again what advantage there is to using Movielink?

Or you could spend $20 bucks a month here here and watch all the movies you want a month.

Thud...Thud...Thud..

The sound of Slashdot kicking a dead horse. Move along people.

Rent: $1400/month

Moving out of the high-rent district would fix that. Buying is also cheaper than renting...the condo I'm in right now runs me ~$570 for everything--principal, taxes, PMI, HOA (that alone is $90/month), etc.

Food: $500/month

Making your own coffee every morning instead of blowing $3-$5 @ Starbucks would knock most of that out. I would be surprised if I'm spending more than $200 per month, and I'm still eating out more than I should (need to lose this spare tire :-| ).

Taxes: $1500/month

Uncle Sam does want an overly-large chunk of your money. Stop voting for Democrats and maybe taxes will return to somewhat sane levels.

Auto: $250/month (not counting repairs or payments)

For gas and insurance, that sounds about right.

No medical insurance

I've had that since I finished college.

No new clothes

T-shirts and shorts are cheap, and in the summer months they're all you need for any true geek job. If you can get to Comdex, you could more than likely score some T-shirts for free.

No family

OK, so I haven't bothered starting one yet and have no immediate plans to do so.

No entertainment

$20/month @ Netflix takes care of that.

No vacations (even if work allowed them)

Two weeks a year.

Sounds like you need to find a better job.

Whaddya get just out of college with a new degree? $40K a year? How long do you get to keep that job?

I started at $24k before I graduated (started when I still had one semester to go) and went to $40k after graduation. I'm still there a year and a half after graduation (about two years total), with frequent raises and a couple of bonuses. I'm doing the network and UI parts of video communication apps. (I also did the first version of the wavelet compression we're using, but that's been handed off to someone else who's better at making code run fast.) The first versions of these apps are for Win32, but Apple and SGI are interested in what our company is doing, so maybe I'll score a G5 to go next to the dual Athlon MP and get to learn coding for Mac OS X. (Nearly everything I know about Win32 coding I picked up on the job, having gotten nearly all the way through college working mostly with Linux and other UN*Xish systems.) I've also convinced the boss that HP Pavilions really aren't cut out for business use, so I build/configure the new computers that we need. I also keep the network running. With all of that stuff going on in a tech company that's been growing at a moderate pace for ~20 years, I think I'm in a fairly good position. It might not pay as much as the dot-commers were getting...but at least I have a job. :-)

Netflix has an affiliate program. It's possible some of those ads are being paid for by users of this service who are getting a commision from the sign-ups (if any).

Affiliate programs have long been a favorite of amateur spammers, it wouldn't surprise me to see people buying web ads for them as well.

...and now there are many. Something like this was inevitable given the growth of the on-line DVD rental industry. You had the trailblazer, then a few specialists started showing up, and now the big boys jump into the fray. It's how almost all new markets progress.

BTVS is in the process of coming out of DVD, and it's some of the cheapest TV releases I've ever seen... Amazon has the entire first season for $29.99, and other available seasons for $45. Alternately, you can rent them from Netflix, and probably your decent local independent-type video store, too.

Hasn't anyone here heard of Netflix. I've been renting DVDs online & returning by snail mail for years now.

I can't see any value in this technology.

If you have a console I highly recommend check out GameFly which is like Netflix for games.
For 20 bucks a month you can rent all the games you want ( having 2 out at a time ) for any of the 3 consoles. It's a great way to weed through the over hyped crap that comes out. And if you happen to like the game you can keep it "out" indefinitely, or even purchase it and GameFly will mail you the box, manuals, etc.

Note that I really don't recommend GoVoJo. They have awful turnaround times and their site isn't quite as nice to navigate.

Grinn.

gurps_npc writes:
"Here is a FAIR comparison. The gym charges people $100 a year, regardless of how often you come, but you must call and get an apointment.

If you have not called yet that period you get an apointment of your choice, using any equiptment. If you last called 7 days ago, you get an apointment during a prime hour, but not your choice, or your get your time, but not with the prime equiptment. Called 6 days ago, you get an "off hour" that day with your equiptment, or a prime hour of their choice with non- prime equiptment 5 days ago, you get your choice tomorrow with the good equiptment, or non-prime equpitpemt today at an off hour. etc. etc. etc. That sounds fair to me. "

I quoted your whole synopsis just so nobody cried foul.

The problem with your synopsis is that you weren't told this is how it works when you signed up. I don't have to pick it apart any further, it is that flawed.

" What does NOT sound fair to me are the hogs that take all the Prime Membership benefits and use them up, preventing any other members from getting their fair share. By using the plan they have, it stops abusive behavior."

How can you hog something that is part of the deal? I'm told that I can rent three movies at any one time. I cannot exceed that no matter what I do. You believe that if I utilize the service 100% as represented to me I am "hogging it?"

If I order a burger and frieds from McDonalds and eat the whole thing, is that hogging too? Maybe when I get popcorn from the theatre I should leave the bag half full for the next guy? What? You say that I bought it and therefore it is mine and not really available to the next guy so not only using one half doesn't really make a lot of sense?

Exactly.

From the site:

Rent All You Want
With Netflix you can rent as many DVDs as you want for just $20 a month. You keep a revolving library of up to 3 DVDs at a time and can exchange them for new available DVDs as often as you like. The number of DVDs you rent depends on how quickly you watch and return each of your DVDs.

Does it not occur to you that it is the business' job to fulfill what it promises and not the customer's job to cut off their own access -- access that was touted and sold to them specifically as a benefit -- in order to not inconvenience the company?

You can always check out the Netflix web site to see if it is worth it for you. If you had bought your DVD player from Best Buy, you would have seen a coupon for a free Netflix trial. It's really not THAT popular, as far as I can tell. It's not nearly as big as Blockbuster or Hollywood in terms of revenue. But they do have a huge selection of DVDs and there is no time limit for your rentals. What always got me about Blockbuster rentals was the 2 or 5 day rental period. With my schedule, it wasn't always easy to watch in the time period. With Netflix, I've kept movies for weeks at a time, waiting for a time to watch it.

You can and should expect the service to work as advertised. They don't advertise a "DVDfairy", but they do lead you to believe you'll be able to get the movies you want ("virtually every DVD published"), and you can rent as many as you like ("Rent all you want" ... "as often as you like").

If you click the Learn More Button, you'll see what they advertise:

Rent All You Want
With Netflix you can rent as many DVDs as you want for just $20 a month. You keep a revolving library of up to 3 DVDs at a time and can exchange them for new available DVDs as often as you like. The number of DVDs you rent depends on how quickly you watch and return each of your DVDs.

More Than 13,500 Movies
We have virtually every DVD published -- everything from classics to new releases. As a member, you'll be able to choose from any of our 13,500 titles -- five times the selection of a typical video store. Our web site is available 24 hours a day and makes finding movies simple and convenient.

Or better yet, rent it from Netflix, which is what I did. Or just buy the boxed set from the usual suspects.

This is a more relevant link to my way of thinking.

It's at NetFlix.

Damn right it's identity theft!

One day a couple of months ago, I got a "Thanks for joining!" message from Netflix. A few hours later, I got several "Thanks for your order, Your DVD rental is on its way" messages. Apparently, some jerk-ass had used **MY** email account to sign up for the service. Sure enough, when I called their customer service department (who were very helpful once they called the phone number on the account and got a non-residential warehouse in California) and complained that I was the victim of, you know, **FRAUD**, they changed the email address to something invalid to prompt a customer service call from the dude who signed up.

The problem is who do they go after when this asshead absconds with the DVDs? Me? I didn't do anything except have an email address someone else used fraudulently. Unfortunately, I'm probably the only contact information they have on the account that leads to an actual human being, and that's why I was so vigilant about complaining early and often.

If anyone was at fault, it was Netflix - mailing lists learned long ago that you cannot assume an email address is valid because someone stuck it in a web form, so they send confirmation messages through an autoreply address validation system.

BTW, one of the early messages I got also included the password for the account. (Good move, NetFlix!!!) I looked up the account to get info for my records, but I didn't change the password or log on to the account (though I was prepared to do so if Netflix couldn't fix the problem). My concern was that some boneheaded prosecutor somewhere would have interpreted that as acknowledging ownership of the account, and I didn't want to be involved any more than I already was.

I'm just glad it's over.

Answer: Netflix

They've already got it recorded. They'll just ship it to you in the mail. And you can even select what order you want them in. No fussing with who is showing what this week.

Did you mean puritanical or draconian? :) Yeah, it makes sense to *reasonably* protect your copyrights... and to reasonably wink at 'em when there's nothing else you can do. I've had the thought that if [optimistic] anyone ever wanted to play in my universe [/optimistic] it'd be easier just to lay out the rules up front -- most fans are pretty good about it if they know what's allowed and the rules aren't too onerous.

You know, your prose obviously mimics my previous posts, and as such is a derivative work under U.S. copyright law and the Berne Convention. I demand that you cease and desist all posting activity until you develop some original ideas. ;-) (let's hope no one trademarks the smiley)

*blink* Rent?? wonder where would carry it that doesn't 1) need a subscription (I'm not a movie watcher, and a sub would be wasted; besides, the rural mail carrier is too blasted unreliable) or 2) make me immediately do the 40 mile r/t to return it to the nearest vid rental outfit (I only trek to town 2x-3x a month).

Get Netflix bubba, sounds like you need it. Start here. You can cancel as soon as you're culturally literate.

If you have a TV (that glowing box thing) the reruns are of course inevitable. I felt very silly after spending a couple of years fastidiously recording Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, only to realize that the show was becoming terribly popular and that I would forever be swamped in reruns. And I still have those damn tapes.

Seriously, Farscape is a fun show, but not the be-all and end-all. I don't like TV a whole lot, and this is one of the few shows in years I'll actually make time to catch, so of course they cancel it. I am intrigue dthat there might be even the slightest chance of fan pressure changing the verdict -- it would be a minor reverse of our feeling, as viewers, that we just don't matter except as consumer sheep.

And Netflix is great for someone who like me never gets stuff back on time (I'd rather pay more than pay late fees) and has kids who insist Animated Whatever has to stay for a month. They have a Mr. Stingy 2-disk plan IIRC for $15/month.

And I'm a rum type myself :)

Rum is great -- for kids. ;-)

Not that anyone including SciFi or /. cares, but I refuse to watch this show after they murdered you-know-what. Opting for the Spielberg name was doubtlessly hoped to be a free ride, though I doubt Spielberg comes cheap. I'm still skeptical of SciFi's editorial decisions. (These are the guys who broadcast double helpings of John Edward, after all.)

Not that I think I'm missing much. IMHO Spielberg's stuff has been pretty bad for a while. Here is a DVD'd list of his film work -- how many titles have you seen, and how many have you liked? There are a number of notable turkeys. I know many people love him, but when I hear "Hollywood" as a put-down for something thought glib and slick and insincere, I immediately think "Spielberg."

So that's two strikes against the show. And, as we all know, even if we miss a show and later regret it, the reruns will hound us for years if the thing was halfway good, or even if not. I laugh now to think how I once meticulously archived Star Trek: TNG episodes (I confess that was a major reason I bought the VCR). I had no idea how popular the show would be!

The first movie has always been my second choice, though, which makes me pretty unique in these parts.

Pretty unique? Kind of pregnant? Fairly dead? Or do you mean pretty and unique? Sorry, I'm a pedant. :)

I think it's fair to say that you are a member of a select few who really like TMP, which would have been a much better movie if someone had merely taken a razor to the whole thing and tightened it up. Having cruised the Netflix subscriber reviews, I realize that a surprising number of people like it. Many there note that the DVD has been souped up a bit, and I haven't seen this version 2.

5. Selection. If the average consumer were to turn to the Internet to rent movies, they would have to be able to compete by providing a selection of movies that would rival the catalog of a mail order rental service or even a well stocked Blockbuster. (15,000 - 30,000 titles would be a good start).

Uh, that's a little excessive, and 30k films probably exceeds the film catalog of all the studios combined. Even Netflix , that wonderful resource of current and classic films that DVD rippers worldwide love so dearly only has 12,000 titles.

I'd like to see more selection as well, but asking for every film ever made two weeks after the service launches is a bit much,

Has anyone else noticed the mediocrity that seems to surround all these movie renting services? I think that perhaps this is a paradigm shift that the current technology simply isn't equipped for. What is the advantage of this compared to going out and renting a DVD from Blockbuster? Now, nobody has to listen to me, (after all, I only got a 1600 on the SATs) but I think we should stand up to these subpar corporations and say, "We don't need your crappy services! Online companies have to be good companies too!"

think monthly fees, as opposed to per-rental fees. Netflix is an example of a rental company that doesn't rely on late fees. I could see this model possibly working even better for Blockbuster than Netflix, since Blockbuster could charge around the same price as Netflix, but gets to skip all the charges associated with shipping to and from the customer. It could even be better for the customer, since if you watch the 3 movies you are allowed to have out at a time in one day, you could just go back to Blockbuster and get 3 more that same day, rather than having to wait around for Netflix and the USPS to get your movies there and back. This would greatly add to the number of titles you could realistically rent in a month on an 'unlimited' plan.

Having said all that, I honestly have no clue as to whether or not Netflix is making a profit. I know they are a fairly small operation, so they may not be bleeding cash from every orifice.

...as I think they were called in the states ... my airman's exam included a few ancient questions about them, though to my knowledge they are essentially extinct. A helicopter pilot I quered described them as you do -- combining features of a fixed-wing and helicopter -- but as he put it, the gyroplane adopted all the worst aspects of each.

Most regular helicopters can land quite well by autorotation, in fact emergency autorotation is 75% of helicopter flight training if one already knows how to fly. Autorotating is basically diving to build up momentum in the rotor after a power failure, then increasing the pitch of the blades to slow descent into, one hopes, a half-decent landing. I tried this once with an instructor in a doorless Robinson, and as a fixed-wing pilot I admit it scared the heck out of me. :)

I glimpsed a gyroplane in flight for the first time the other night watching the classic It Happened One Night (1934; Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert). Highly recommended -- the movie, not the flying contraption. :)

That link should be http://www.netflix.com.

I'm sure there are plenty of "big picture" reasons why this is bad - no mac support for other stuff like encrypted CDs, etc - but I'm going to ignore those for now and continue to be narrow-minded about this, since it's Monday and you can't stop me. To me, this article is like saying "Divx not supported on macs" - it will be met with a resounding chorus of "so what?"

(No, not that Divx. The original one. Who was the jackass that thought it would be a good idea to name a codec after the Circuit City fiasco, anyway?)

I don't have a Shatner story, however a co-worker of mine,who is a huge Star Trek: TNG fan, waited on Patrick Stewart in our shop. He was very amicable. As it turned out, my associate ended up going out to Stewart's house to do an in home estimate and then installing an entertainment system for him. He was beside himself that he had Capt. Picard's phone # in his cellphone. He had to restrain himself from calling Mr. Stewart and checking up on it every other day. One day he swung by again to make sure everything was working. Patrick Stewart opens the door, looks my friend in the eye and says (with his trademark delivery)...

"I do believe you've gone beyond the call of duty."

Needless to say, my buddy Shatnered his pants.
Not a Shatner story, just an affirmation of how a Starfleet officer should conduct himself.

I'll stick to Netflix thanks. I can watch the movie as often as I want and return it when I want. Pretty slick. Wish my local Blockbuster would let me just drop the rentals in the mailbox back to them. No little plastic discs in the landfill either and no risk of leaving the disc til tomorrow to watch and finding it dead.

How's this for an idea: implement something like NetFlix's rating system and user profiling. Any idea if it's patented? If not, the adaptive rating system would be a real asset to a music site of the sort we're talking about.

For those not it the know, Netflix is an online DVD rental place that has a decent system for rating the movies; it can learn your tastes and guess which movies you might want to rent. Here's a brief description of the system:

• I can browse the catalog, with the available titles rated according to what the "average visitor" thought of them. This does not require signing in.
  
• I can rate the items I have an opinion about (already watched the movie or I'm not interested) affecting the "global rating" of those items. This requires the creation of a customer account.
  
• As a side effect of contributing ratings, the system profiles my tastes, and adjusts the ratings I see when logged in to reflect what it thinks I'd think of things I haven't rated (based on the ratings given by people of similar tastes).
  

I think this would be really useful to a music site. They could carry all sorts of music, the punk rockers could label the indie brittney-clones as "not interested", and once they find music they like the site can reccommend new bands for them to try out. There could even be a section on new releases, perhaps organized by genre, and the site could hold off on posting a rating until enough reviewers have judged it to be a significant sample.

now, if I only knew how to code something like that...

If it's late fees you're worried about, just use a service like Netflix.

We have this in the US too. Netflix charges $20/month. I don't own a DVD player, but I've heard good things about them.

Simpson was in Capricorn One?? Yeah, now I think I remember that vaguely. Now, there's a joke in here somewhere, but unfortunately he just doesn't seem as funny anymore. Is his acting career gone forever? (Say yes.)

Good flick, though. Especially when the biplane fakes out the (black, naturally) helicopter, my favorite.

Blockbuster has the most depressing selection of anime I've ever found. Hollywood Video has a slightly better selection, but it's still lacking. The greatest annoyance is when they buy the first two discs or tapes of a series like Neon Genesis Evangelion and never mind about the rest.

Even Netflix suffers this problem, and it's annoyed me enough to make me cancel my subscription in favor of GreenCine, another online DVD rental store that charges $2 more a month than Netflix but has an exponentially more complete anime collection. I've only used them a month and I'm already relying on them for my commercial- and edit-free anime fix.

...the fanbase in mainstream America simply isn't large enough to support such a small group of Anime fans, as obsessive as they are.

IMHO, you are both right and wrong with this assertion. I think the number of anime fans that are interested in the shows that Cartoon Network is showing and the editing that they do is a relatively small number of people. Overall, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people that consider themselves "Anime Fans" is actually quite large.

Frankly, I haven't watched any anime on Cartoon Network in the last 1 1/2 years. However, I can assure you that does not exclude me from being an "Anime Fan". Instead, I tend to rent stuff from the local anime rental store (yes, I actually live within 2 mi of a store that specializes in renting anime... House Of Anime).

For those that don't have that option, Netflix also has a very large supply of rentable anime at a very reasonable month membership price, and they seem to be getting larger and larger quantities of it due to it's popularity.

Finally, for those of us who have generally seen most of the good US-available shows or merely want to preview stuff before they bother renting it, USENET (alt.binaries.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.repost) and winmx have a large number of digital fansubs that are often within a week of the current Japanese tv schedule. I'm sure Kazaa and the other filesharing programs have a lot too, but winmx seems the most popular among the IRC crowd I hang with. I generally watch stuff that won't be available in any american store within the next year.

So considering all of those competing sources, you start to see why the small number of relatively old anime shows that Cartoon Network shows just don't hold the audience that they seem to expect. On the other hand, if someone started a cable channel that broadcast near-current, English-subtitled anime 24/7, I think that they would find themselves with ratings that would have advertisers queuing up at their door.