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Why Netflix Is One of the Most Important Cloud Computing Companies
Brandon Butler writes "Netflix, yes the video rental company Netflix, is changing the cloud game. During the past two years the company has pulled back the curtains through its Netflix OSS program to provide a behind-the-scenes look into how it runs one of the largest deployments of Amazon Web Services cloud-based resources. In doing so, the company is creating tools that can be used by both entire business-size scale cloud deployments and even smaller test environments. The Simian Army, for example randomly kills off VMs or entire availability zones in Amazon's cloud to test fault tolerance, Asgard is a cloud resource dashboard and Lipstick on (Apache) Pig, is a data visualization tool for the Hadoop program; there are dozens of others that help deploy, manage and monitor the tens of thousands of VM instances the company company can be running at any single time. Netflix is also creating a cadre of developers who are experts in managing cloud deployments, and already its former employees are popping up at other companies to bring their expertise on how to run a large-scale cloud resources. Meanwhile, Netflix does this all in AWS's cloud, which raises some questions of how good of a job it's actually doing when it can be massively impacted by cloud outages, such as the one on Christmas Eve last year that brought down Netflix's services but, interestingly, not Amazon's own video streaming system, which is a competitor to the company."
While I watch Netflix, I sometimes think about all of the magic that must be going on behind the scenes to deal with varying delivery speed
In almost all cases, my video entertainment proceeds, uninterrupted
As a guy who has worked with video streaming at the lowest level, I have nothing but respect for their tech
It frustrates me that a company that relies so heavily on open source technologies on the server totally snubs users of those same open source technologies on the Desktop.
So you would have rather had no Netflix support in Android or ChromeOS? Because there would be no support at all without DRM. Such is the nature of the beast.
All so people can watch some of the worst entertainment in human history.
You know what? There's actually a bloody gigantic amount of excellent content on NetFlix. Admittedly their ultra-pathetic interface makes it damned near impossible to find, but it is there.
Now, there are reasons to dislike DRM, and in fact the stupid regional DRM licences are one of the reasons why people pay extra to access US NetFlix instead of their local one*, And surely there are still times each month when I'll grab something from Pirate Bay because NetFlix doesn't have it.
But, and this is the big fat critical but, at the end of the day NetFlix works, works well, and delivers a hell of a lot of good programming for very, very little money. And does so in way that the DRM is simply not noticeable.
It may be preferable for NetFlix to have no DRM, but as it stands now I can't think of any practical difference it would make to my experience as a user.
Until the anti-DRM crowd creates a fully Open Source media service, licences tens of thousands of TV shows and movies, and serves it up DRM free, NetFlix is the best that we've got.
*If you're stuck with NetFlix Canada, well accept that you've got one quarter of the choices, and half of those feature Paul Gross.
Three Squirrels
You're not obligated to use it. If you don't want to use DRM, then don't. But if other people want to, that's their choice. That's what freedom is about. Don't try to shove your opinions down other peoples' throats. Just make your own choice, and let other people make their own choice.
I prefer to do it that way. I don't want to be bothered to have to pay bills every month. All I have to do is check in to make sure the appropriate amount is being charged. Is that so hard?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The Media Source API that Netflix is helping to push also provides a lot of really useful features for non-drm video in the web browser as well. Providing a simple way to download chunks of video and seamlessly insert them into a container through javascript will prove really useful for javascript web applications. Even some of the encrypted stuff will be great for things like sharing personal videos with only a few friends.
As a web developer interested in new ways to provide video, the Media Source stuff would immediately be really useful to me, and I'm sure many other people who won't even touch the DRM part. Don't let one company sour the whole proposal.
I don't see the big deal with this, honestly. This is primarily a problem for individuals who have a problem managing their budgets. When they see $10 in their account and think it's OK to spend $10 despite prior commitments like Netflix, they need to keep better track of their money and where it's going. I say this as someone who frequently had this problem when I was just starting out.
I, too, prefer to simply pay bills rather than having it automatically deducted, but I won't raise a stink if it isn't an option. It's just so low on my radar that it's not worth the effort getting upset.
For the record, your friend should call her bank and arrange to have overdrafting disabled as it is never worth the fees involved. That system is your bank screwing you far more than Netflix ever can. Every bank can do this as far as I know. Then when Netflix tries to debit a card with insufficient funds, it will simply fail.
If you use a debit card for this ( as my friend has to do for reasons not necessary to go into), you risk an overcharge on your account.
This cannot be stressed enough. Never use a debit card online. In fact, just because you have a checking account that does not mean that you need a debit or ATM card, so don't even have one issued to you. When you open up that checking account, tell them "no."
If there comes a time that some fraudulent charges were made against your checking account, the set of plausible ways that it could have been accomplished have been greatly reduced in this manner. With checking accounts, you have to fight to get your money back, and its a whole lot easier if it was an ATM withdrawl but you've never had an ATM card issued.
"His name was James Damore."
Since you and Netflix sold yours and everyone else rights and freedom away for a few convenient shitty movies, we will now have to deal with the introduction of hardware locked "trusted computing" phones, and software that requires it. I will certainly never purchase another Android device ever again.
This was bound to happen eventually. It's not just Netflix, it's also Amazon, which has consistently refused to bring AIS to anything but a handful of Google TV devices. And it will be coming to Apple devices sooner or later. Enjoy your Ubuntu phone, I guess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been a user of both services since they became available. Along with Amazon Unbox now becoming Amazon Instant Video and the even newer Amazon Instant Video with Prime, I humbly suggest that we consider that a large part of the Amazon Prime streaming library may actually be served to us by a white-label Netflix service.
Consider this: both Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video offer many of the same programming options with a few selections unavailable on one service or the other. Plus, there are many obscure series collections that appear on both services and at the same perceived video quality (at least, to my eyes).
The bulk of the live streaming library has to be shared, in my opinion, with Netflix. Business-wise, it makes sense. Logically, it makes even more sense.
Kriston
I still go to my local video store to rent movies or buy the DVDF/Bluray. I get commenataries, extra scenes and can watch it whenever I want. Eventually, Netflix deletes stuff from their libraries. What do we do with a movie we want to see again later? Some cloud services I do use, like Crunchyroll. But I much rather get the DVD set.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
I like how you say the movies are shitty, as if you know what the poster (and other Netflix users) watch. Saying they're shitty is somehow supposed to enhance your position - to suggest that they're not worth it anyway to offset the DRM aspect.
Let's face it, hardware locked "trusted computing" phones and other hardware are the norm and getting worse no matter WHAT we do. We don't have the influence to tell every other person out there to not buy them - telling people to not enjoy life and modern technology over some ideological issues that really aren't that bad in the first place isn't going to work. Heck, as I get older I find myself less and less caring as well as more important things take priority in my life.
We can't stop locked hardware trends because the companies are too powerful. Fight battles that can be won.
I'm one of those individuals who have a problem managing my budget. I once spent $3 on an app for my Droid, which cascaded into $180 in bank fees because the account was overdrawn by a few cents by the time they tabulated everything since the bank (conveniently for them) does charges in such an order that it maximizes the fees instead of minimizing my pain.
I've also been badly burned by ill-timed Netflix charges.
The answer I found was not free, but it is very convenient and much cheaper than bouncing a bank account: A Wal-Mart pre-paid Visa card.
The card accepts direct deposits, does the usual free online bill-pay stuff, and lets me buy stuff online like Netflix.
Direct deposits are free. It costs $3 to load cash or a (printed) check into it at Wal-Mart. And it costs $3 per month if I'm under a certain threshold dollar amount for direct deposits in that month.
All those $3 fees might seem expensive, but Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day and they're bloody everywhere: It's very convenient. My wife has a companion card that she can dump money into if things go south while I'm traveling, and the balance is shared (instantly) with my own card.
And when I'm out of money? It just doesn't work: Transaction Denied. And if it accidentally works and the account goes negative, all I owe them is the actual negative balance -- there are no overdraft fees.
My wife has a companion card with her name on it, and the same account number. If one of is is traveling, it's trivial to put money into it and it is accessible anywhere instantly, 24/7.
More recently, I just (earlier today) got a pre-paid card from Simple. Same basic concept as Wal-Mart, except without a physical presence, and with no meaningful fees to speak of. It takes direct deposits, and I can deposit checks/money orders by taking a picture of them and stuffing them into a drawer -- no travel required. (And free online bill pay and and and...)
It also lets me extract money from a few ATM machines near me without any fees at all, and they never charge fees of their own. (Cute.)
And, like the Wal-Mart card widget, there are no overdraft fees: The basic premise is that when you're out of money, it stops working -- and if it works anyway, then that's kind of their problem. Simple also has some good budgeting tools which I haven't yet explored because I haven't had a chance to put any money into it.
In any case, there are easy solutions for auto-billed services like Netflix and people who are lousy with money. These are two solutions, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, but there are many others like them.
(Simple appears to still be in the start-up phase of things. They're invite-only.
I requested an invitation on their web page got one fairly quickly, but now that I'm a card-carrying member I also have a handful of invites that I can distribute freely. AFAICT I do not get any sort of financial reward, or even a bloody cookie, for passing out invites. If anyone wants one, send me an email -- if nothing else, it's free to play with.)
(Also: Fuck banks. With interest rates being zero on most consumer checking accounts, the litany of unexpected fees that can result from a minor mistake, and their limited hours, there's little reason to continue using them for every-day transactions. I do still keep a bank account because they can issue a cashier's check, and will count my change and notarize my documents for free, but I keep only $10 in it.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Why shouldn't it be? Because you think it's yucky? Standards document what multiple vendors do, to help them do it the same way. That's all - they do not endorse, or make moral judgments.
Basically, successful standards usually take what vendors have working just fine without a standard and standardize it. Just making things up because they sound good and trying to impose them leads to fiascos like the previous HTML "standards", where half the endpoints didn't remotely comply.
Avoiding things that Xtifr finds yucky is unproven at best as a method for making a successful standard.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Impressive technology, though I don't agree with some of the testing they do live in production. But important? Hardly. If Netflix went away right *now*, nothing inthe World would really change.
Compared to, say, Google's search going offline which would have a direct impact on both personal and business productivity globally.
Netflix does run their own CDN (based on FreeBSD) for the movies, which are the vast majority of their bandwidth. The Amazon stuff is for the web UI and background processing workloads (e.g. working out popular films related viewing patterns and so). This stuff is pretty busty, especially as more and more people use custom NetFlix apps and so don't hit the web UI at all.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm one of those individuals who have a problem managing my budget. I once spent $3 on an app for my Droid, which cascaded into $180 in bank fees because the account was overdrawn by a few cents by the time they tabulated everything since the bank (conveniently for them) does charges in such an order that it maximizes the fees instead of minimizing my pain.
First of all, if your bank can charge $180 in overdraft fees for being a few cents over then you really need to get a different bank.
Secondly, if you're in a position where $3 can push you into the red, but you can still manage to afford a smartphone, then you're doing something seriously wrong with your finances.
You should also consider getting a card like a Visa Electron or a Mastercard Maestro - these are debit cards that do not allow you to go overdrawn (they are intended for minors) and will just reject transactions if there is not enough money in the account for them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News