Posted on 04/04/2006 10:59:40 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
This "throttling" business is for the birds. I noticed too a few months back when movies that I returned took forever to be processed. Another goodie I noticed is that Netflix would often ship me movies from a California distribution center (I live in GA), so that it would take much longer for me to receive the movie and for them to receive it back from me (3-4 days shipping time each way). Completely bogus if you ask me.
Yeap, good point.
It is impossible that they could rec' it so quickly, so I have to assume they have some mechanism at the Post Office to scan and report it to their warehouse as "on the way" and they release the next movie before rec'ing the first.
If anyone knows how this works, I'd love to hear about it. Can they have scanning at every post office?
The throttling hasn't affected me too much and the NetFlix customer service is pretty good - easy to sign up, easy to leave. No hassles.
The Netflix chief of operations was the former postmaster general - maybe they have an "in"!
For the most part, I've been very happy with Netflix, but have been a victim of their anti-throttling stuff at times. I do like their selection and often am recommended movies that I had never heard of that I really end up enjoying. Their recommendations are a service I couldn't get at a local video store. I also occasionally have problems with movies getting lost in the mail (though this has only happened about three times in a year).
I wonder if this is the real tech that they want to protect with a patent?
I'm going to take out companion patents on the:
"Method of discharging urine from the bladder of a human being while maintaining privacy..."
It was probably just a matter of timing and where you put the disk to be mailed. When I got married I put the invitations in a drop box by my wife's work in the morning and some of the people got the invitations that very day about 4 hours after I dropped them in the box. Figure somebody like Netflix is getting deliveries every hour or so, if you put your return in a box with a 5PM pickup it could have been processed overnight by the PO and been in Netflix's first inbound batch.
They'll lose.
The court ruled that patent laws were intended to protect any method, whether or not it required the aid of a computer, so long as it produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result." Thus with one stroke, the court legitimized both software patents and methods of doing business, opening the way for Internet-related patents. In the six months following the ruling, patent filings for software/Internet business methods increased by 40% and the USPTO created a new classification for applications: "Data processing: financial, business practice, management or cost/price determination."
Since the State Street case, patents have been issued for an online shopping rewards program, referred to as the "ClickReward" (U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,870); a system that provides financial incentives for citizens to view political messages on the Internet (U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,008); an online auction system by which consumers name the price they are willing to pay and the first willing seller gets the sale, also known as "name your price" or as a "reverse auction" (U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207); and a process that supposedly blocks the auction practices described in the previous patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,265).
You can't patent the letter "e", silly.....you can only copyright it...LOL.
Envelope 1 - returns to my home city
Envelope 2 - returns to Wallaby Gulch, Australia
Envelope 3 - returns to Yak Route #7, Outer Mongolia
So far I am doing fine by accidentally losing envelopes 2 and 3 and putting all three disks in #1.
And time now, I expect envelope #1 to show up as Apollo 11 Landing Site, Sea of Tranquility
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P58723.asp
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So what this means is that Blockbuster must be making inroads into NetFlix's business if they feel threatened enough to pursue this patent enforcement action.
The next time you get a Netflix envelope, look at the back of it. There is a bar code window that shows the bar code on the white inner sleeve.
I guess I'll have to accidentally start losing envelopes with return addresses to random places. While Netflix claims that they ship from alternate addresses when a movie you request is not in stock at the closest distribution center, the funny thing is that I only get movies shipped to me from Siberia when I've had a lot of rentals in a month. I don't think it's a coincidence and think it's a deliberate way to get me to rent fewer movies in a month.
Actually in the terms of service they mention using alternate mailing locations to slow down the cycling, as well as deliberate delays of at least a day.
That makes sense. I haven't read the terms of service, so I was just speculating (I know they were recently changed). I do like Netflix but think it's a bit misleading that they call their rentals "unlimited" when their terms of service state otherwise.
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