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A Peek Into Netflix Queues
margaret writes "The New York Times has an interactive Web app where you can map the popularity of various Netflix titles by neighborhood, in a dozen different cities. Invasion of privacy or harmless voyeuristic fun? Either way, it's pretty interesting."
porn, now that's where it'd get interesting...
Anyone else notice that Knowing's rank seems inversely proportional to Rachel Getting Married's rank?
I can think of so many better things to be doing with my time than looking at what people are renting based on their ZIP code.
Does whining on Slashdot really count as something better?
Nor, does it mean that we should not "get it".
Different strokes, for different folks. Some people like demographics.
Kid-proof tablet..
Looking at the Seattle map one interesting thing stands out for me. The rentals in the zip code of Seattle University seems completely different then everywhere else. What is interesting that ' pseudo intellectual' movies that you would think would be more popular, Milk, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, are relatively low in this area of learning, while mindless movies, Role Models, House Bunny, where the most popular.
You can use it as an indication of how different regions feel about homosexuality by looking at the rental patterns for Milk (no link, sorry, you'll have to click through the movies until you find it). It was a lot more popular on the west side of the bay than the east side, which also matched voting patterns for proposition 8 (the west side was a lot more strongly opposed to it). In Boston it seems like they are a lot more open minded, except in area code 02126. Don't know what happened there.
Strangely enough, Milk is in the top 3 movies in San Francisco in every area except the Castro. Try explaining that one if you can.
Qxe4
People in NYC are going to be a lot more aware of hype surrounding something because of all the ads in NYC.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Well, they *had* an interactive application that did this. Now it's a smouldering hunk.
Marketing people care. You'd better believe they care!
Invasion of privacy or harmless voyeuristic fun?
What invasion of privacy? They're not showing what any particular person rented, just what the aggregate in a given area liked. If this is invasion of privacy, then so is any demographic statistic saying, for instance, that New Yorkers like hot dogs from a stand on the street or the baseball stadium over that cooked at home.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
You could draw many fun, but useless conclusions from this data. This is probably the kind of info that sales pukes, marketing drones and security theater types drool over.
Mad Men was only rented by those Hollywood types in Glendale and West LA
Tyler Perry's chitlin flicks do well in South Central, Inglewood and Long Beach - why?
Religulous' demographics proves that rich people really are godless.
White people really liked Australia, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona is better than the US Census for racial profiling.
Crooked cop movies, Pride and Glory, do well in "concentrated urban areas" - interesting.
Pinapple Express proves that some things are universal - legalize it
Say you have kids. Those concentrations can give you a very good idea about where there are other people who have kids, so you can look at those neighborhoods. Especially if you're moving to a new city or something.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Whatchu talkin' 'bout, adolf?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
"Some people like demographics."
Apparently, some people like masturbation as well. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get a life.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Could perhaps be explained by europeans using VPN accounts in these areas to access netflix.
Look, I think this stuff is kinda interesting, but you need to be very careful with information visualisation of geographical regions. And some of this information is a little misleading.
Some neighbourhoods are smaller in size (area) than others. If a neighbourhood is larger in area than another, a dominant colour (such as red!) will be highly dominant - not just because the movie is more popular - but because there is more red and the area is larger. This is a psychological thing; eyes are drawn to larger objects (yeah baby!) and we see fewer shades of red to blue (a physics thing).
Are the number of people in a neighbourhood more than another neighbourhood? How the borders are defined really needs to be stated. Using point sources of density would have been more appropriate (eg http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/
I could be full of shit as I've had a few white wines and we had a lovely 30 degree day out in the sun after a few weeks of cloudy rain.
.
Apparently, some people like masturbation as well. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get a life.
But then I'd have to cut back on masturbating.
I am sure there are other ways of determining the racial and socio-economic make up of an area, before buying a home there. Like talking to the neibours of the property you are interested in.
Say you have kids.
Or perhaps you like kids...
That is Mattapan; sometimes affectionately referred to as Murderpan. There is a very large criminal element there, and as the name implies, a very high murder rate. That alone cannot explain it though, unless you see significant dips in Dorchester and other high crime areas. I don't really care enough to look, since I don't really think you can make reasonable conclusions even when having local/inside information about a region based on this kind of data. About all you can do is theorize, which is all well and good, as long as you realize that you cannot take it any further than that, or test the veracity of your theory. Since I see no benefit to formulating an untestable theory I don't think it makes much sense to advance one, except for the pure entertainment value, if that happens to be something you find entertaining.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Letter to the Editor @ NY Times:
Dear Sir,
I find it highly innappropriate that you have made my personal information available via your website!
Sincerely,
Dr. Sanfransisco Bayarea
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Was wondering the same thing--such a library would be fun to play with.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
note: this ranking is biased by instant viewing.
"instant view" titles are those you watch on your computer (or roku or xbox or whatever). they are "second tier" movies only. but, because they are convenient, they got a TON more views than movies you have to actually get the CD mailed to you for.
so, what you're seeing here is a hybrid list, with "top tier" movies vote counts watered down by over-counts of instant-play-ables.
fwiw.
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
We love us some gay and lesbian movies.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Is there a web site showing the demographics of masturbating?
I am in despair over the newspaper industry. The country and the world has needed news researchers, and over the last half-century that has been the province of big newspapers like the Times, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and others.
Lately, though, newspapers subscription rates have fallen dramatically, their income has fallen even faster, and they're all cut back on their research budgets.
Here, though, we see a truly interesting tool, one that gives more insight the more one plays with it (as the long articles in newspapers used to do the same as you read through them.) The credit list on this webapp is long, the quality of the presentation is absolutely top-notch, and the bandwidth behind it apparently infinite. That the New York Times would do this is commendable.
Would CNN.com do this? Could Google News do this? Drudgereport? No, those sites are merely aggragators. They are only interested in what happened in the last 24 hours, at best.
But, unfortunately for the Times, this remarkable tool is inaccessible in their dead-tree edition. I suppose it is a loss-leader for them, and a worthwhile one, but it does reinforce all the thousand other indicators that traditional newspapers are dying.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I would probably think twice about moving into any neighborhood where its residents have the movie "Gigli" in the top ten,...
I'm not sure what you can reliably take away from these statistics. Since it is only rentals it excludes the following conditions:
Did they go see it in the theater and now own the DVD? (will probably never rent)
Did they go see it in theaters and didn't care for it? (will probably never rent)
This means that the stats only capture those who
1) Didn't see it in theaters - i.e. it wasn't a big deal to see it / they didn't consider it worth the ticket price
2) Are curious enough about it to rent it later
After renting once, did they buy it for their personal library, or say 'meh' and never watch it again?
Trolls read articles and write custom trolls now? Wow.
That's why I don't RTFA. I don't want to risk ending up a troll.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
...I don't want to risk ending up a troll....
The Slashdot moderation system is broken, totally ruined. It seems that anyone who posts anything controversial, to which the majority of Slashdot readers disagree, gets modded troll or flamebait. On the other hand, obscenity and profanity often gets modded insightful. I have gotten to the point where I don't give a hoot if every one of my posts gets modded down, just because I often post opinions to which the majority disagrees.
By refraining to speak your mind, just because you don't want to be modded down, you're helping prop up a broken system.
All theory is gray
During the Netflix contest to get more accurate predictions of movie rentals, the thought did occur to me that geospatial data might be useful to add the algorithm. More information, such as gender, income, and age, and past favorites may have a spatial component and add to the success of future predictions. This is at least a glimpse of this kind of analysis, so yes, I find it interesting.
My god I hope not.
Something like 80% of kids that are molested are molested by relatives. The "think of the children!" bullshit is a big, fat boogeyman put out there by idiots. And yes, I do have a kid.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Most watched for 55450 is Battlestar Galactica season 3 and nothing else. It's the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport; on the map it's the empty grey area south of the cities. Maybe this is TSA homework?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Those statistics could come handy in "community standards" related lawsuits.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
It was actually just a joke. I have two kids.
Checkout 80225 in Denver - small grey square east of down town above the "L" for Lakewood. It looks like just one persons queue; titles from the same series, common sense of humour, etc... Plus, according to this random page there's only one person living in that zip code. I think we have winner for this round of "thoughtless privacy invasion".
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Also quite handy if you don't have kids and want to avoid them. Although I already knew my neighborhood, Capitol Hill in Denver (80203, 80218), does not have a whole lot of families with kids. I imagine a lot of near downtown areas are similar. It can also tell you a little about the people in the area. Milk is the number one most rented movie in my area and you can probably guess why (hint: rainbow flags).
Sorry ;) That kind of stuff just annoys me to no end, that people throw reason out the window every time someone mentions kiddie fiddling or terrorism.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
its information in aggregate. privacy implies PERSONALLY identifying information
if i say "wilbur cross of madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then that's an invasion of privacy
if i say "323 people in madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then there is no invasion of privacy
its ok to get upset about invasion of privacy. getting upset about it when none actually occurs is some sort of spastic hysteria, a triumph of emotion over logic. save your ammo for real battles
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is there a web site showing the demographics of masturbating?
Any solid-color map you have ever seen does. The one color represents 100% of the population. These are called relief maps.
DATABASE WOW WOW
The Slashdot moderation system is broken, totally ruined. It seems that anyone who posts anything controversial, to which the majority of Slashdot readers disagree, gets modded troll or flamebait.
It happens sometimes, but it's been my observation that it isn't what you say but how you say it. I've been downmodded for posting something unpopular (e.g., any mention of religion) but not always. I've been modbombed before, but somehow the final moderation is a positive one regardless.
Metamoderation, otoh IS broken. It used to be that you moderated a moderation as "fair" or "unfair" and if your mods were deemed unfair you didn't get more mod points. Now metamoderation simply adds more moderation after the thread has been cold for a while.
On the other hand, obscenity and profanity often gets modded insightful.
Obscenity and profanity can be insightful, depending on its context. It's assumed that this is news for nerds, not news for prudes. This is supposed to be a logical and rational bunch of people who mostly aren't distressed by "bad words" or talk of sex.
I have gotten to the point where I don't give a hoot if every one of my posts gets modded down
The only good reason to care of your comment is modded down is that nobody will see it, so posting it was a waste of time.
By refraining to speak your mind, just because you don't want to be modded down, you're helping prop up a broken system.
Somebody who refrains from speaking their mond for fear of a downmod is a karma whore.
Free Martian Whores!
Apparently, some people like masturbation as well. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get a life
Apparently, some people like masturbation as well. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get a WIFE
There you go I fixed it for you. I know this is a geek site. But atleast you need to try getting a wife instead of just masturbating.
Spoken like a true bachelor, or a newlywed.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You don't need Netflix for that. One quick drive through the neighborhood will tell you way more about the demographics than any movie rental patterns will.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is an extremely dangerous tool. If you are looking to live in an area, you can use this tool to see the proportion of (say) blacks and hispanics (through the choice of movies), and then decide to move/not move there, thus encouraging the creation of racial ghettos
Or you could just look at census data and not have to try to infer racial data from movie choice.
...I've been downmodded for posting something unpopular (e.g., any mention of religion) but not always...
Religion, especially Christianity is unpopular on Slashdot. But so are other topics, especially in science, where the point of view expressed is outside of the mainstream.
PS I know someone named Mcgrew who is married to a blind lady. Is that you by chance? He is into computers and could be on Slashdot.
All theory is gray
I've been downmodded for dissing Sony over XCP. Dis somone with mod points' employer and often they'll mod you down.
I haven't been married for six years, and Evil-X isn't blind; well, she's blind to truth but she's not sightless. She's no laday, either, she's a serial adultress. Must be another McGrew. Are you in Springfield by chance?
Free Martian Whores!