Netflix makes some changes and I'm just waiting for the world to notice

So an interesting development has happened with Netflix. Yes, they released their API which is awesome and means software developers out there will now be rolling out custom Netflix programs across all platforms, but that's not the big news that broke. The other thing Netflix announced is that they have made a deal with Starz Play. And this is where it gets really interesting.

Starz Play is a streaming/download service from the Starz cable channel. It isn't a Netflix competitor but rather a Starz station alternative. They have a much smaller selection of movies availible, about 1,000. What Starz will do is roll their selection by keeping the most recent movies up and knocking off the back end. When a new movie is made available to Starz they'll knock off movie 1,000, push everything down and make the new release movie number 1. For $7.99 you can get a Starz Play subscription through Netflix, or get all of Netflix (watch now and disc service) for $8.99 so I'm not sure of the logic in that. What this means for regular Netflix subscribers is that you now have 783 new streaming titles available as of this morning and another 1,500 titles scheduled from Starz by the end of the year. Many of these are new releases like Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Spiderman 3 and Superbad.

So far this has just sounded like a Netflix press release so let me tell you what the game changing factor is here. People with Netflix, for all practical purposes, now have access to a premium cable station regardless of their cable subscription. If you have basic cable from any provider but also a Netflix subscription then you have a cable station. Even if you don't have cable at all you still have a cable station. That, along with the Netflix deals with ABC, NBC and the Disney Channel, mean that your cable subscription is fast becoming obsolete. Sure, you could always use bittorrent on sites like EZTV.it and avoid cable all together but this is the first move, from a unambiguously 100% unambiguously legal perspective, to have cable content without cable. Between Hulu, Netflix streams and Comcast's Fancast you can watch most network TV shows the day after they air, in HD, on demand. Without any sort of TV service.

The fact that this is rushing in on the heels of Comcast instilling a 260 gig/month bandwidth limit is both exciting and problematic. The reason is that the trade off between this increase TV over the internet is that it takes a lot of data transfer. Speed is no longer the issue, with most people now running residential cable connections instead of dial-up. The issue is managing all of that data traffic. Comcast's response is to cap connections to avoid the tubes being tied. Other providers offer tiered service by having the customer pay by usage. Still, this is great for consumers. Instead of a “get what you pay for” service people are now offered a “pay for what you take” service. Only pay for the bandwidth you use and only pay per channel that you want. It's the equivalent of not paying for food by what you take home, but rather paying for what you use. That extra half gallon of milk that you poured out and never drank? On the house. But you wanted more steak this week? Pay for that instead. Only want 3 movies from Starz instead of the whole channel this month? Then you just pay the bandwidth for those movie and not for the cable service. Just want to catch up on Best Week Ever and Heroes? Then cut off your cable subscription and catch those on the net, paying only for those.

While this is all great, it's a new market structure that neither the cable providers nor the stations have yet grasped. If I had to guess, I'd say the stations will catch on right before the cable providers but I have no idea when. What you're seeing right now is a couple of policies mixing and neither group noticing.

On one hand you have TV stations clawing for more audience numbers with online services. I only watch Simpsons on Hulu.com during my lunch break but since Fox wants those numbers they've legitimized internet TV in exchange for being able to count viewers. Instead of just counting watchers for a show the night it airs many places are counting that plus online and Tivo views within 3 days. This will eventually move to 2 exasperate but equally important markets: pure time-shifting online watchers (raises hand) and regular TV audiences.

The other policy is that of the internet providers fighting to control their bandwidth usage and attempt to curb P2P. Comcast previously had an unspeakable, invisible cap for their “unlimited” internet plan. After being charged by the FCC they changed it to a public 260 gig/month. This usage limit is what is mixing with the internet viewer scramble and where it mixes is where this new market will be won and lost.

In essence you now have content providers and service providers become consumers. A TV station (Fox, NBC, HBO) can now choose how they want their content spread; internet, cable, torrent, iTunes. At the same time you have service providers with a new choice about what to provide. If any cable provider wanted, they could drop all TV signal and focus on the internet. While that sounds like they'd be limiting their market they could easily throw in a Netflix subscription and a Netflix set-top box (the API is public now, remember?) as part of their service the way Comcast currently provides MacCaffey antivirus subscriptions to their subscribers. This would let them focus their money and resources in one specific direction while still offering what people want. And for anyone who is complaining about watching all this on their computer instead of their nice TV, since Netflix has a public API anyone can make a set-top box to play SD and HD streams on their TV from Netflix, Hulu and other sites. That's what we do at my place.

Ok, that was a lot to take in. What does it all mean? Well, for now it means that all you TV watchers have lots of options and to the few of you tech-savvy viewers you have little or no need to ever look at a TV schedule again. For you less savvy folks it means that in the future (not too far off) you wont need to look at a schedule. You just need to wait until the TV stations and the cable providers realize this. Because technology isn't as good as the cutting edge of technology; it's only as good as the cutting edge of usable technology.

Call for help: RE Ubuntu and Linux

Recently I've been working on a bunch of tech projects.  I have a Media Center PC at 98% completion and 14 inch, wifi enabled digital picture frame assembled and just waiting for an actual frame.  I also picked up a discarded laptop and put Linux Ubuntu on to mess around with.  I figured a new OS would be fun to learn and being a techy guy it wouldn't be much trouble.

 

Well, 3 days with this thing and it's driving me nuts.  The install was a pain, but that's because the laptop's optical drive is a bit... touch.  I ended up rolling a distro onto a USB key and telling the BIOS to ask where to boot from with every start up.  That worked and now it boots great.  But Ubuntu isn't playing nice with me.

 

I figure the best way to start learning is to jump right in and what better way to learn basic system settings than by customizing the interface.  I figured changing the screensaver, wallpaper, icons, etc would be a great way to learn the menus and see what sort of look Ubuntu can give me.  Well, it's been 3 days and I have yet to figure out how to install a simple screensaver.  Maybe I haven't found the right forum sites but no set of instructions has worked so far.  I'm not a Microsoft whore but in windows you either ran an install file or dropped the .scr file into  your windows directory.  Easy.  No so with this.  One screensaver has a filetype that doesn't launch any sort of installer or manager and the other I downloaded is a compressed archive with many many subfolders.  Extracting those to my system didn't do anything at all.

 

Then there's the desktop manager.  There's a program called Compiz.  It lets you customize your desktop with great visual effects.  You can make windows jiggle, you can customize the layout of multiple desktops and you can filter colours.  Supposedly.  I have seen many many many references to this really neat looking cube display for managing multiple desktops.  You hit a key and a 3D cube appears with a different desktop on each side.  Just rotate it and the one you want spins over and pops up.  Doesn't work.  All it lets me do is flip between 2, making the rest of my desktops (I use a total of 4) completely inaccessible.  Then there's the colour filtering.  You set the order of the filters, the hot key to activate/deactivate the filter and another hot key to cycle through them.  I've always wanted to make a steampunk set up with either a black and white or sepia screen.  This will be great!  Except that it never activates at all, let alone lets me cycle through.

 

The real kicker is that to get the few features that seem to work up and running I need to launch the program, Compiz, and then have it reload my window manager with ever log on.  Supposedly I've successfully made it run on startup except that it doesn't.  In Windows I would just make a shortcut to it in the startup folder or, if the programmer was smart, check a single box in the actual program to get it to run.  Well, I followed the instructions for a command line solution and a startup entry solution.  Neither does a single bit of good.

 

So, maybe some of you people out there can help me, or forward this on to a tech-savvy friend: How the hell does one do anything in Linux?  How is it that in one night I can rollout XP on an old laptop, customize it with software to make it an RSS fed picture frame, disassemble the whole of the hardware and put it back together to look like nothing but a screen.  I can do all that but in the course of 3 days I can't get a single feature that's supposedly the easy, welcoming staples of the of the Ubuntu system to run on a laptop with better specs?  I've been bookmarking sites and preparing for a Linux changeover for a couple of weeks but none of those sources have working instructions.  I mean, I know they must be working for most people because these are big web sites with satisfied comments.  But right after an out of the box install you would think that copying and pasting command line code would work.  I mean, there's no room for error there.  Any yet I get nothing.

 

So please, drop some advice or ask your friends to if they know about Linux, because I'm so close to just reformatting and putting windows back on.  At least that OS let me do things other than surf the internet.  Right now my cell phone has more user friendly appeal than my laptop.

In celebration of 9-11

We all know that 9-11 is not really "Patriot Day".  It's "Call Everyone A Terrorist Day".  And indeed, there are many people who should be called terrorists out and about this year.  Let's take a look at the past day or so and see what pops up:

Are Fire Hydrants in Your Neighborhood Turned On?

If so, you might be helping terrorists.  In this Texas district the council was smart enough to turn off all fire hydrants since 9-11!

"These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines," Hodges said.

Sure, it cost one local man his home in a fire, but you know what?  At least the terrorists didn't get his stuff.

Lose your house, lose your vote

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

Sure, it stops fakers from voting from foreclosed addresses.  But what about people who still live there?  What about people who don't have a new address?  What about people fighting and contesting the foreclosure?  Don't worry, this would stop them from voting too.  Remember, when poor people vote rich people suffer.

 

Senate Committee Expands Justice Department Copyright Enforcement Powers

Sweeping legislation granting the U.S. Justice Department the ability to prosecute civil cases of copyright infringement sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee 14-4 on Thursday, and is expected to hit the Senate floor for a vote soon.
[...]
The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, (.pdf) as we reported Tuesday, also creates a Cabinet-level copyright-patent czar charged with creating a worldwide plan to combat piracy. The czar would "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic and international intellectual property enforcement programs."

Finally, people are stepping up to change unreasonable search and seizure, along with due process, into the new standard.  I'm sick of all these "rights" and whatnot.  It takes to long to get people prosecuted!

Quebec man changes name to dodge relentless airport screening

While he loses patriot points for both complaining about security and for being Canadian he does get ingenuity points.  He got around the terrorist watch list by changing his name from Mario Labbé to François Mario Labbé.  Really.  It's not like a terrorist would ever think of chaning their name.  The system is safe for another day.

Cops Need Warrant for Cellphone Location Data, Judge Rules
And this man is a terrorist.  He pushed until a judge ruled that the police do indeed need a warrant to tap your cell phone and track your movement.  But don't worry.  The ruling only applies to Pennsylvania so the rest of the country is still fare game.  Freedom is knowing that people with guns always know where you are.  Always.

Not real reference questions

Not real reference questions: by bulletproofheeb

EDIT  Um... where did my David Tennant mood set go?

Totally unncesessary

Totally unncesessary by bulletproofheeb

Eating Good in the Neighborhood

Well, at least eating good until they smell a gas leak a evacuate the restaurant. The good news is that my half-price appetizers went to free half-size appetizers. The bad news is that I left hungry because I only ate half of my food. While I was taking pictures a waitress ran up to me and:

Waitress: Are you taking video? Me (warily): Pictures... Waitress: You should take video and submit it for those commercials at applebees.com! Me: Heh. Sure And then I start to shoot video.

And now for the Applebee's Gas Leak Evacuation Show!

Fire truck #1 Exterior establishing shot Firetruck #1 with the (really bright) SUV that showed up to investigate Firetruck #2 with an ambulance on the way So bright! A walk around I did. Video is kinda choppy since it was shot at night, but you can see a bunch of people just sitting around. The rest left because, hey, free food! And here's a little commercial. I don't know either... It was late and everyone was trying to have fun.

The end result is we couldn't go back in to pay so it was free food. We did, however tip the waiter.

A new level of geekery

As some of you know my beloved HTC Tilt broke a few weeks ago. I was riding a little roller coaster (Dark Knight) and the screen cracked in my pocket. Since then I've been going a little stir crazy from lack of internet in my pocket. Since cracking a phone on a roller coaster isn't covered by warranty and since I got the phone half off with a new service contract there was no way at all I would be able to buy a new one at full price. That left me with two options:

1. Send the phone off to a 3rd party repair shop (in Texas) to have them replace the screen.
2. For about half the price I could order the screen myself and completely disassemble the phone, risking a complete failure.

To clarify the situation a bit it's important to realize that the phone itself was still perfectly good, other than the screen. I plugged it into my computer and brought the display up on my monitor. All my data was fine and I pulled the address book onto my SIM card. It was functional and I actually did all the backing up after the phone cracked.

So, play it safe (ish) or do the whole thing my self? I went the risky route and just got the screen. Going in I gave myself 60/40 odds of pulling this off. The screen came with tools and a PDF copy of the manual for full disassembly. To cut the growing suspense I'll tell you now: it worked. My Tilt is running again and that night I ordered a hard case with a screen cover. Aircraft aluminium. Not taking any chances.

So while the whole repair was going on I took some pictures so here they are. Click on any of them for larger versions and notes to point out what's what.

If you somehow stubled here looking for help on replacing the screen on your Tilt I hope these help. Feel free to leave a comment asking for help and I'll fill you in on the tricker points of the operation.

New screen on left. Broken Tilt on right.

Take out the battery and stylus.




Remove the speaker.




See that green printed circuit board? That's gonna come off next.




Then the whole plastic back.




That's the main PCB.




Now that's just the main PCB.




The back of what's left. Keyboard on left, screen on right.




Keyboard up top, screen on the bottom.




This is just the screen part. The right is where the SIM card is.



Everything so far.




When we finished I ended up with an extra screw. I doubled back to find out where it came from.




Just the larger items. No, that's not a cassette on the right. It's the spring that puts the tension on the keyboard.




That hole in the middle is where the screen was.




My new geek merit badge.




New screen. Yay!

And that's the short version. The longer version has some shouting, a broken tool and a long period where the case wouldn't go back together. The short version is simply "success".