Slashdot Mirror
Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature
Donald Burr of Borg writes "One of my favorite features of Netflix, the video-rental-by-mail service, is 'profiles.' Profiles lets you create 'sub-accounts' for your friends/family, so that they can share in the video rental love. Each profile gets his/her own Netflix queue that he/she can manage with their own login/password. You can divide up how many movies get sent to you vs. the other profiles under your account. E.g. if you have a 6-out-at-once plan, you can choose to get 3 movies at a time, and have 3 other profiles each receive 1 movie. Unfortunately, the fun stops September 1, at which point Netflix is, for unknown reasons, going to terminate this feature. Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.' Improvement indeed."
And everyone knows that every time you burn a DVD, your dead uncle is watching you. You know, that creepy one who always asked if you wanted your back rubbed when you took a bath. Apparently, he gets off on DVD ripping, too. So, you know, don't rip DVDs. It's bad for your soul, and pervy uncles like it.
I just called Netflix customer service to ask for clarification on how this helps improve the web site. The rep responded that they needed to free up programming space for better features, and that it's really a tiny, tiny percentage of people that use profiles to separate queues. (Slashdot and Gizmodo, the two sites I checked for reactions to this, are apparently chock full of tiny, tiny percentages.)
When I told her that I'm a programmer and I don't understand what it means to free up programming space, she was quiet for a moment and then said, "This is really a decision that they've already made, so it's not like they're going to change their minds."
I'm all for freeing up programming space. Statistics show that programming space will be all used up in the next 10 years if we don't start conserving it.
"I just wanted to share that I am extremely disappointed to see Profiles going away. Profiles have allowed my wife and I to share a netflix account without any marital discord. Now I will have to navigate the horrors of balancing my wife's desire for romantic comedies with my desire for action & sci-fi movies. I will be sure to forward you the transcripts of our arguments so you too can join in the discomfort."
> I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
No. You'd probably do all your work but never save it.
I assure you that if there were a CLI version of Netflix, it would take less time to type:
netflix
than it does to load the GUI page and click on the "send to top" button. And certainly placing items at a specific location on the list would be much faster.
GUI is more intuitive, and that is great, but CLI is faster and more powerful (with a very small number of exceptions).
Boiled peas?? Luxury! When I was young we got boiled SAND on airplanes. And we were thankful!
Should I keep going? Okay, I cheated and got The Crow from Google Sets :p
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Psah. We had to bring our own sand. Hot. And bags were strictly banned from flights, so you carried your sand in your hands.
And that's the way we likes'd it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They might just be going to charge you more.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."