10 Feb 2006
Netflix penalizes best customers

Despite the plenitude of superfluous lawsuits clogging our courts, every once in a while a decent claim is presented. This, in my opinion, is one of them - it's a case of software assisted fraud. And it forced the company to changed their stated policies and published terms of service.

All this could've been avoided, of course, by just telling folks how the service really worked in the first place. That's a concept known as "honesty", and it's becoming an increasingly scarce commodity.

The little-known practice, called "throttling" by critics, means Netflix customers who pay the same price for the same service are often treated differently, depending on their rental patterns.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Guilt and fear motivate better than hope

This is news? The only thing I could add is that it sure doesn't hurt to have a little hope thrown into the mix, and it also helps to have a "big stick" waiting in the wings for punishment, too (and the drug warriors have certainly got that these days).

I'd like to suggest to these researchers that they could've saved a lot of time and effort by simply reading some histories on the spread of monotheist religions from the Middle East over the last two millennia ...

"Smoking pot may not kill you, but it will kill your mother," says an ad from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. In the first empirical work to examine both stated intentions and actual behavior, researchers argue that this sort of negative message - evoking both fear and guilt - is a far more effective deterrent to potentially harmful behavior than positive hopeful or feel-good messages.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

'Micro' wind turbines are coming to town

Now we're starting to really think - this is a promising development. Rather than crafting huge "wind farms", the new approach is to distribute the generating capacity over and onto existing structures. They even discuss using the architectural wind dynamics of the building itself to harness energy.

But the real trick will be to keep the Department of Energy from picking a "winner" to shower with subsidies, thereby wounding or killing off the rest of the new designs.

A handful of start-ups are making mini turbines that go on top of city buildings and turn wind power into electricity.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Bus driver throws complaining rider into traffic

Remind me never to take the bus in "The City of Brotherly Love" ...

A transit bus driver grabbed a woman by the hair, knocked her head into a pole, opened the door and tossed her into traffic after she yelled at him for missing her stop, police said.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link