Friday, September 23, 2011

Netflix problem: not what you think.

Netflix increased its price.

Netflix split in two.

The real problem is that after jerking around with mailing stupid DVDs, which never appealed to me, Netflix finally distributed movies via the Internet.  At that point I bought a Roku box and subscribed for $8 per month.  I cancelled after two months for the most basic of reasons: the Netflix selection of streaming movies was substantially different from the movies available on DVD, which did not directly compete with service providers like cable and phone companies who had long standing arrangements with content providers.  Netflix was messing with the primal forces as mentioned in the 1975 movie Network.

The joke description of Netflix streaming movies was that the recognizable ones  were made during the Carter administration.  Anything newer was junk.

Too bad.  The concept is good but those primal forces were too much.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Droid Bionic: thank you Motorola and Verizon Wireless.

I ordered is as soon as it was available and it arrived the next day.  There was a problem with activation (Verizon Wireless had a disconnect between my account and its registry) but that was resolved fairly quickly.

Google Android OS brought my data onto the new smart phone immediately and has kept that data in sync with the google servers as it had done previously with the original Droid.  Why anyone would jerk around with the mess that Apple imposes on its sucker customers is beyond me.

I have not tried some of the enhancements yet, such as HD quality video, but the comparable functions to the original Droid work at least as well.

I like the fact that Motorola did not clutter it with a proprietary shell but left the native Android interface with which I was already familiar.  That was a factor that contributed to my buying the Bionic.

Great screen.  I like this device and will keep it.