Random Technology Thoughts

**Intellexual** · 09-17-2011, 09:32 PM

Damn you, Fotki!!!! I wanted to take some time to consider switching from Fotki to Photobucket (for my giffery). Lemme 'lone. Fotki is currently on autorenewal and reupped itself (even though it kept flashing me a warning that my subscription was ending). Welp, I have another year to shop around. I will be disconnecting my interweb credik card from my Fotki account too. You MFers, you.

ETA:
Okay, I deleted my saved card from Fotki. I suppose that's how they do the autorenewal. Perhaps there's another option, but I didn't see that. So, if you don't want Fotki swiping your card on the sneak tip, you might want to disconnect your card from the account.

**Truessence** · 09-18-2011, 06:37 PM

Thinking my IPhone 4 died and crashed last month! I brought a Blackberry Torch to replace my Iphone. I decided to test my Iphone to see if it would come back on yesterday and it did!! Trying to decided if I want to switch back over to my IPhone 4 after using my Blackberry for a month.

**Intellexual** · 09-19-2011, 03:56 PM

Email from Netflix entitled An Explanation and Some Reflections:

Dear [Customer's Name],

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

The postscript linked here: http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/expl...flections.html

The comments are intriguing. It's cool that it's not entirely anonymous feedback.

**Soul Rebel** · 09-19-2011, 04:42 PM

Like all Netflix customers, I got this in the form of an email last night. I found the email and the new plan to be idiotic and a weak justification for doubling the rate of service. (people were objecting to the rate increase and now he's trying to say the Netflix rate isn't increasing, you're just getting charged twice b/c it's two different companies.

)

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**Intellexual** · 09-19-2011, 04:51 PM

Particularly when it was noted that they won't be integrated, even initially to get people to go along with it until it's too late, I knew this was another instance of overestimating the intelligence of people getting paid obscene amounts of money.

**Soul Rebel** · 09-19-2011, 05:01 PM

Werd. He's making it sound like Netflix subs knew this but he's clarifying now - oopsie! NO Brah. The first email only said the rate was increasing if you wanted to keep both DVDs & streaming. It certainly didn't say why, or that existing Queues would be dismantled and it CERTAINLY did NOT say that they were splitting into two companies. This 'explanation' and his arrogant wording thereto made a bad situation worse. Like a lot of customers I wasn't planning to drop Netflix because of the rate increase, but I am thinking about it now. Netflix CEO completely played himself with this nonsense.

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**Akomas_Angel** · 09-19-2011, 08:03 PM

Originally Posted by Soul Rebel

Werd. He's making it sound like Netflix subs knew this but he's clarifying now - oopsie! NO Brah. The first email only said the rate was increasing if you wanted to keep both DVDs & streaming. It certainly didn't say why, or that existing Queues would be dismantled and it CERTAINLY did NOT say that they were splitting into two companies. This 'explanation' and his arrogant wording thereto made a bad situation worse. Like a lot of customers I wasn't planning to drop Netflix because of the rate increase, but I am thinking about it now. Netflix CEO completely played himself with this nonsense.

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That to the 1000% degree.

---
I have really enjoyed my time with Sprint. My service, bills, and customer service have been excellent. But.........AT&T is now offering a 36% discount through my employer, as opposed to the 15% I am getting with Sprint. Decisions...decisions...decisions....

Whew, Jeebus from on Mt. Zion AT&T got some high prices. I think I'll be staying my butt over in Sprint land where my bill would have me considering prostitution as a side-hustle to keep my phone on. *walks out mumbling*

**poohslocs** · 09-23-2011, 01:39 AM

Originally Posted by Akomas_Angel

That to the 1000% degree.

---
I have really enjoyed my time with Sprint. My service, bills, and customer service have been excellent. But.........AT&T is now offering a 36% discount through my employer, as opposed to the 15% I am getting with Sprint. Decisions...decisions...decisions....

Whew, Jeebus from on Mt. Zion AT&T got some high prices. I think I'll be staying my butt over in Sprint land where my bill would have me considering prostitution as a side-hustle to keep my phone on. *walks out mumbling*

It's too much even with the discount? That's one heck of a discount.

**Denny** · 10-11-2011, 04:18 PM

My Acer laptop died after 4.5 years RIP but I have a new Acer all in one desktop PC sitting on my desk, never thought I would go back to desktops, my laptop was another appendage lol

**Karibana** · 10-11-2011, 04:56 PM

Now that I'm dowloading TV and movies like nobodies' business, the time as come for me to get another external harddrive for storage to back up my old PC and to store all that extra stuff. My current one is as 90gb's worth of space will get fill, I can get at least 2 terabytes worth for 100$, 3tb for less then 200$. With that much storage I wouldn't have to worry about the size of files I snatch online for a long, long time.

Sigh, my Dell Notebook's battery has given up the ghost (by my own fault, I kept it plugged in all the time) and the notebook itself is acting up. The notebook doesn't see that it's plugged in when the battery is in so once the battery is charged, it starts draining and shuts down. Considering how much Dell charges for a refurbished replacement, I may as well just troll Kijjiji for a "new" laptop. I don't think i'll get a full sized laptop, a more recent notebook will do. Only question is to I go with Windows for convenient online surfing or another Ubuntu with little worry about malaware attacks.