Question for anybody more familiar with the content licensing business:
How does Netflix becoming stream-only affect their negotiating position with the content license holders?
One comment points out that both Netflix and content holders can't lean on the DVD mailing business to supplement licensing costs. Is it really the case that content providers could hold Netflix to higher licensing costs or more catalog restrictions if they (both sides) know Netflix has the DVD mailing business to supplement the streaming business?
I wonder if there are other reasons behind this split more directly tied to licensing. Would content providers be more willing to open up their content catalogs with a stream-only business?
I spent the weekend writing a scraper in Clojure using the HtmlUnit Java library. As much as possible I aimed for purely functional, side effect free code, but as with most Java libraries, using the HtmlUnit API forced me to write functions dealing with mutable, stateful Java objects.
I would have preferred to write everything in a purely functional style because I agree that it makes testing and reasoning about your code so much easier. But looking back, the ability to dip into Java (and use the great HtmlUnit library) was a big win in terms of accomplishing the task at hand.
Leveraging Twitter on the review pages is a great idea. I don't think I've seen this feature on other review based sites, but it seems obvious now that I've seen it implemented. I am seeing some character encoding issues, but it might be my browser.
Along these lines, I would also recommend a graphical button for the go/search/find. Large, bright and tactile or 3-D (within reason). Make it clear "this is what you push" after filling out the form. Make it inviting.
I really like this idea. I spent several minutes looking through the suggestions and bookmarked it for later.
A secure, online back-up solution for all my computers that is dead-simple to use on all OSes.
And I mean dead-simple as in install a client that by default intelligently finds the stuff that I might want to back-up (iTunes library, folders with lots of pictures, My Documents, /etc & /home directories, etc.), with the ability to specify certain folders/directories as well. Or since we're dreaming, why not the whole computer? And of course it always runs in the background, never consumes 100% of my CPU or bandwidth when I'm using the computer, is always up to date, and pretty much never bothers me once I've set it up.
I don't want to think about back-ups. I don't want my family to have to think about back-ups. My dad is interested in getting an iPod and will definitely purchase songs on iTunes. I want a dead simple setup for him to keep those backed up.
"Doing a startup isn't a sensible CAREER decision... It's a largely emotional lifestyle decision."
Both of these come from the comment below by webwright. After all the reasons and explanations I had read before, they really nailed it for me and have always stuck in my mind.
How does Netflix becoming stream-only affect their negotiating position with the content license holders?
One comment points out that both Netflix and content holders can't lean on the DVD mailing business to supplement licensing costs. Is it really the case that content providers could hold Netflix to higher licensing costs or more catalog restrictions if they (both sides) know Netflix has the DVD mailing business to supplement the streaming business?
I wonder if there are other reasons behind this split more directly tied to licensing. Would content providers be more willing to open up their content catalogs with a stream-only business?