I've rented both the original version of Solaris (very good, but don't start watching it late at night) and Raging Bull within the past two months. I get my movies from the Georgia facility, and they arrive just like clockwork - usually two postal days after the mailing notice. I've never had a DVD lost, either, and I've been a member for a year and a half now.
I'm the kind of member netflix probably hates - I'm on the 4-at-a-time plan, and spouse and I blow through a lot of movies pretty quickly. Admittedly, my tastes run to foreign/indie/unknowns, so the VAST majority of what's in my queue at the moment is available now:
Current queue: 55 (11 of those are awaiting release, so we'll call it 44) Current marked Very Long Wait: 2 (4%) Current marked Long Wait: 5 (11%) Current marked Short Wait: 0 (0%) Current marked Now: 37 (84%)
Spouseling and I have been catching up on some TV shows, such as 'Sex in the City', 'Six Feet Under', and 'The Prisoner', so these high numbers aren't quite so appalling as they might seem:
Movies out April 2003: 10 (+2 mailed back in the last 48 hours) Movies out March 2003: 8 Movies out February 2003: 8
I think my secret is to do what I've been doing for a long time: use netflix to seek out the movies that aren't in the mainstream. I joined Netflix precisely because I could not get foreign/indie/older/controversial movies on DVD in northeast Alabama. I have so many movies that I want to see that the immediate (un)availability of any one movie is not a deal-breaker for me.
Nice to see I'm not the only person with that opinion.
I'm a graphic/print designer. Most of the outside world sees me as geeky because of my interests, but since I don't munch C++ for breakfast, I can pretty much guarantee that most of the l33t geeks-with-free-time here would consider me a wannabe.
So what.
I don't like Microsoft's tactics and pricing, and I was frustrated with having an unstable computer, so I got someone to help me put a Debian partition on my computer.
It was screechingly awful. As in - one of the worst experiences I've ever had. First, getting the OS to recognize all of my internal hardware took a couple of evenings.
After much work and frustration, we figured out that my scanner and webcam weren't going to work under linux.
Then, God forbid, I actually tried installing stuff. First, GIMP, which I needed to complete graphics work. The directions I found were useless and wrong, and when I asked knowledgeable people for help, they told me to read the damn directions.
So I thought I'd try to install something like LICQ so that I could ask some friends for help. I finally ended up having to ask a friend to come over to try to get it to install. No such luck.
Getting access to mp3s stored on another computer on our in-house network required a massive amount of finagling from a command prompt.
Imagine this: I'm someone who uses computers as a tool, because that's what they are. They aren't my life, or the main focus of my existence.
So why in the world would I want to spend two weeks' worth of evenings attempting to install an arcane, obfuscated OS that can't recognize my hardware, makes it virtually impossible for new-to-the-OS users to install software, has (to boot) inferior knockoffs of the software I'm using now?
I wiped the partition and started over. I got win2K working and stable and my apps reinstalled and was back up and working again within four hours.
I do still support linux, despite its flaws. I have three friends that work for VA, and two of them have OS-related problems that (to me, anyway) are significant. One of them has never been able to get sound working under linux, and another can't get mozilla to install without causing the entire machine to crash.
I just find it funny - and sad - that even some of the linux evangelists can't get a computer to work completely correctly with their OS of choice.
I do sometimes envy the glass houses that the holier-and l33ter-than-thou linux evangelists live in, but quite frankly, I've got work to get done. I don't have time to screw around with an OS to try to make it work. I need something that works now.
Maybe someday I'll try installing linux on my computer again. But I can pretty much guarantee you that it won't be anytime soon. Unless the usability improves, I'm stuck with lousy documentation and pre-pubescents who have nothing better to do than flame people needing help.
Those are two of the surest ways I know to get people to ditch an OS and never, ever look back.
Blogger's ok. Not great - ok. Then again, I was one of the people who got burned a bit when they had massive server problems.
I can't speak for LiveJournal, since I've never used it. After getting burned by a service that didn't actually reside on my server, I got pointed to Greymatter. It's a set of perl scripts (available for free but the creator takes donations) that you install on your own server (bonus) and provide unbelievably configurable output (major bonus) .
It's not for everyone - a lot of the weblogging crowd isn't real interested in the code that creates their pages; in that case, they need to stick with something that won't make them have to worry about the underlying code of their site.
But if, like me, you know exactly how you want your site to look and function, and just need a way to make it easier to craft posts on a daily basis, GM's the way to go. I can't imagine going back to a service whose scripts don't even reside on my own server.
(Not to mention the user interface is quite nice, and doesn't use a ton of frames like Blogger does.)
Slashdot Mirror
I've rented both the original version of Solaris (very good, but don't start watching it late at night) and Raging Bull within the past two months. I get my movies from the Georgia facility, and they arrive just like clockwork - usually two postal days after the mailing notice. I've never had a DVD lost, either, and I've been a member for a year and a half now.
I'm the kind of member netflix probably hates - I'm on the 4-at-a-time plan, and spouse and I blow through a lot of movies pretty quickly. Admittedly, my tastes run to foreign/indie/unknowns, so the VAST majority of what's in my queue at the moment is available now:
Current queue: 55 (11 of those are awaiting release, so we'll call it 44)
Current marked Very Long Wait: 2 (4%)
Current marked Long Wait: 5 (11%)
Current marked Short Wait: 0 (0%)
Current marked Now: 37 (84%)
Spouseling and I have been catching up on some TV shows, such as 'Sex in the City', 'Six Feet Under', and 'The Prisoner', so these high numbers aren't quite so appalling as they might seem:
Movies out April 2003: 10 (+2 mailed back in the last 48 hours)
Movies out March 2003: 8
Movies out February 2003: 8
I think my secret is to do what I've been doing for a long time: use netflix to seek out the movies that aren't in the mainstream. I joined Netflix precisely because I could not get foreign/indie/older/controversial movies on DVD in northeast Alabama. I have so many movies that I want to see that the immediate (un)availability of any one movie is not a deal-breaker for me.
Nice to see I'm not the only person with that opinion.
I'm a graphic/print designer. Most of the outside world sees me as geeky because of my interests, but since I don't munch C++ for breakfast, I can pretty much guarantee that most of the l33t geeks-with-free-time here would consider me a wannabe.
So what.
I don't like Microsoft's tactics and pricing, and I was frustrated with having an unstable computer, so I got someone to help me put a Debian partition on my computer.
It was screechingly awful. As in - one of the worst experiences I've ever had. First, getting the OS to recognize all of my internal hardware took a couple of evenings.
After much work and frustration, we figured out that my scanner and webcam weren't going to work under linux.
Then, God forbid, I actually tried installing stuff. First, GIMP, which I needed to complete graphics work. The directions I found were useless and wrong, and when I asked knowledgeable people for help, they told me to read the damn directions.
So I thought I'd try to install something like LICQ so that I could ask some friends for help. I finally ended up having to ask a friend to come over to try to get it to install. No such luck.
Getting access to mp3s stored on another computer on our in-house network required a massive amount of finagling from a command prompt.
Imagine this: I'm someone who uses computers as a tool, because that's what they are. They aren't my life, or the main focus of my existence.
So why in the world would I want to spend two weeks' worth of evenings attempting to install an arcane, obfuscated OS that can't recognize my hardware, makes it virtually impossible for new-to-the-OS users to install software, has (to boot) inferior knockoffs of the software I'm using now?
I wiped the partition and started over. I got win2K working and stable and my apps reinstalled and was back up and working again within four hours.
I do still support linux, despite its flaws. I have three friends that work for VA, and two of them have OS-related problems that (to me, anyway) are significant. One of them has never been able to get sound working under linux, and another can't get mozilla to install without causing the entire machine to crash.
I just find it funny - and sad - that even some of the linux evangelists can't get a computer to work completely correctly with their OS of choice.
I do sometimes envy the glass houses that the holier-and l33ter-than-thou linux evangelists live in, but quite frankly, I've got work to get done. I don't have time to screw around with an OS to try to make it work. I need something that works now.
Maybe someday I'll try installing linux on my computer again. But I can pretty much guarantee you that it won't be anytime soon. Unless the usability improves, I'm stuck with lousy documentation and pre-pubescents who have nothing better to do than flame people needing help.
Those are two of the surest ways I know to get people to ditch an OS and never, ever look back.
Blogger's ok. Not great - ok. Then again, I was one of the people who got burned a bit when they had massive server problems.
I can't speak for LiveJournal, since I've never used it. After getting burned by a service that didn't actually reside on my server, I got pointed to Greymatter. It's a set of perl scripts (available for free but the creator takes donations) that you install on your own server (bonus) and provide unbelievably configurable output (major bonus) .
It's not for everyone - a lot of the weblogging crowd isn't real interested in the code that creates their pages; in that case, they need to stick with something that won't make them have to worry about the underlying code of their site.
But if, like me, you know exactly how you want your site to look and function, and just need a way to make it easier to craft posts on a daily basis, GM's the way to go. I can't imagine going back to a service whose scripts don't even reside on my own server.
(Not to mention the user interface is quite nice, and doesn't use a ton of frames like Blogger does.)