Micho Kaku is a theoretical physicist who’s incredibly articulate, funny, and fascinating. His site contains numerous interviews and lectures. Dig around after listening to the one linked to above, he’s quite an amazing person.

This new Netflix terms of use just popped up on my Netflix login page and while I generally skim these things, hold my nose, close my eyes and hit “I agree” I took a closer look at this one given Netflix’ recent history of taking it’s subscriber base for granted.

Here are a few choice quotes from the Netflix Terms of Use which I have yet to agree to:

“Netflix reserves the right, from time to time, with or without notice to you, to change these Terms of Use…”

“We reserve the right to terminate or restrict your use of our service, without notice, for any or no reason whatsoever.”

“We reserve the right in our sole and absolute discretion to make changes from time to time and without notice in how we operate our service. Any description of how our service works should not be considered a representation or obligation with respect to how the service will always work. We are constantly making adjustments to our service and often these adjustments are not completely captured within these Terms of Use.”

“From time to time, we test various aspects of our service, including our website, user interfaces, service levels, plans, promotions, features, availability of movies &TV shows, delivery, and pricing, and we reserve the right to include you in or exclude you from these tests without notice.”

No doubt every terms of service has things in it like this but one would think that Netflix would notify users of its service that things are changing, or that those users are being included in a test of a new user interface, or, god forbid, that their account is being suspended. This says they can cancel my account for any reason they want at any time and not tell me why.

The irony is if you call Netflix with a problem they’re incredibly friendly and helpful, I’ve never had issues with the people who work the phones or with sending back a damaged DVD.

This sounds like it was written by the same person who came up with the Qwikster idea.

Steve Jobs talking about how he sees the world and the amazing thing is, his life and accomplishments are a testament to what he says here. He really did it.

[via PetaPixel]

Fascinating panel discussion at The Churchill Club with Bill Atkinson, Jean-Louis Gassée, Andy Hertzfeld, Regis McKenna, Deborah Stapleton, and Larry Tesler moderated by Paul Freiberger.

Jean-Louis is incredible (as always).

[via Richard Koch]

Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper) has done a very nice comparison of the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks on the iPad. He’s comparing availability of content (books and periodicals) less usability of the various tools.

By the way, Instapaper on the iPad is an incredible way to read articles that you’ve stored there. It caches the articles so they can be read offline and has many of iBooks’ reading features like type size and face control and more.

I’ve also read dozens of posts about it, many of them very well thought out and written. No one seems to be defending DVD rentals for the reasons I’m going to list here.

1. DVDs have better image quality than streaming video. If you’ve invested in a decent HD TV, that’s meaningful.

2. DVDs have extras on them not available to streaming customers. I love the behind the scenes, making of, and other goodies on “loaded” DVDs and when I can, I always buy DVDs that have them. Many Netflix rentals have them as well. Streaming offers none of this.

3. The Netflix DVD library is extensive and Netflix may not be able to rip enough of it to make streaming have the long tail of content their DVD library has.

4. If Netflix could and did rip their entire DVD library and their entire 24 million person subscriber base moved to streaming, do you think the current internet could handle it? I don’t. Not at this point. While streaming is no doubt the future this Netflix move is premature given the current limitations of streaming to such a large user base.

My plan is to stick with the new Netflix and whatever the other company will be called for a while to see how it goes but if it doesn’t go well and gets even more expensive I’ll go back to buying DVDs for my collection and reselling them if I watch and don’t like them. I did this for years before joining Netflix and given that if I like a movie I’ll watch it multiple times, I’ll just do it again.

But I’d rather use Netflix, just the way it was.

An opportunity for public libraries

Some may be thinking that this Netflix misstep might be an incredible opportunity for local DVD rental businesses but I doubt that. Brick and mortar costs serious money. What it is however, is an incredible opportunity for public libraries.

Our little library in Warren, Connecticut (population 1000) has a growing collection of both video cassettes and DVDs. I’ve donated dozens of DVDs to them (nice tax write-off) and will continue to do this over time.

Public libraries are free and while their DVD checkout policies aren’t like Netflix’ they’re long enough so one has plenty of time to watch the movies checked out.

If I were running a public library I’d be buying up DVD collections like mad right now and hoping Netflix put their DVDs for sale at some point in bulk so I could buy those too.

No doubt libraries are hurt by Kindles and iPads and other e-readers but those who bet that the end of the physical book is on the horizon may be the same people who are betting that the end of the DVD is on the horizon.

That horizon isn’t in sight yet and physical media has a future. It may not be as commercially viable as it once was but public libraries aren’t money making institutions, they’re pubic services.

Given the economy, as services like Netflix/Qwikster become more expensive free public services like libraries become more attractive.

This post from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, explaining the price increase: An Explanation and Some Reflections is what gives me pause. It’s a poorly written, convoluted explanation of a bad idea. Read the comments, they’re telling.

Here’s their video apology:

He makes no apologies for the price increase, just for not letting us know why Netflix has done it. The reason they did it is because they are separating their two businesses: DVD rental and streaming. The DVD rental business will be renamed Qwikster and the current web site will be rebranded with this name and a new logo and will sit at a new domain. It will have its own separate charge on your credit card.

While I agree that the future of Netflix is streaming movies over the internet this is the most awkward way to handle the transition I can imagine.

For a company that’s done well, it’s obvious to me that Reed Hastings and Netflix have no clue how their loyal customers are hurt by this and it’s not just the price increase, it’s the separation of the services into two web sites.

For me the appeal of Netflix is their web site where I can search for a movie, decide how I want to watch it (DVD or streaming if its available on both) and then, rate it when I’ve watched it. One web site, one search, decide on platform if possible, then one rating. And, the rating system helps fine tune the Netflix recommendation engine which has worked amazingly well for me, pointing me to movies I’d never heard of or considered before. I enjoy poking around the Netflix site rating and re-rating movies. The separation of the two services will mean I’ll have to do it twice.

At this point very little of the content I like to watch on Netflix is available through streaming so much of my business comes through DVD rental. Unless they’ve got much of their collection digitized and will be announcing it soon, I’d drop Netflix (streaming) before I dropped Qwikster (DVD rental).

It may be that the problems with the US Post Office will lead to enough of a price increase for mailing DVDs that the business model Netflix was founded on won’t work anymore. Anyone who’s thought about this for more than a minute understands that at some point in the future Netflix won’t be shipping out DVDs anymore but that transition from, as Nicholas Negroponte put it “atoms to bits” is as much about marketing and keeping “old skool” customers happy and in the fold as it is about an internal business model change that none of us customers were told about.

The mistake is the way they’re doing this, not the price increase on the service. This stumble may put them out of business.

This video pretty much sums up social networking for me.

And, I’m not sure if these are made up or real but they made me laugh pretty hard last night: Do you have a Facebook? More here.

There was an interesting piece on The PBS NewsHour last night on Americans Elect, a group attempting to use the web to offer Americans a different way of becoming involved in the political process: ‘Americans Elect’ Group Challenges U.S. Presidential Primary Process. While I was interested in the concept neither guest made clear what the site is about and it left me wondering. However, I’m interested in almost any alternative to our current corrupt and broken political process so I’m giving it a try.

I just signed up and started answering the interesting questions to establish “my colors” which look like this so far. I’ll answer more questions and get a new set of colors no doubt:

I hope Americans Elect turns into something. I’m guardedly hopeful.

[via Scott James]

Early on post 9/11 I felt for TSA agents; they have to absorb quite a bit of nervousness, aggravation, racism, and idiocy from people who don’t flow well. However, lately there has been a change in the way TSA seems to be doing their screening and instead of helping with flow, they’re getting aggressive which is unnecessary and hurts their PR.

I routinely travel with a pack and a camera bag with high end gear in both. When I run this stuff through x-ray (computer out of bag) I like to get through screening so I can be there to pick it up when it gets through the conveyor belt. But, if I’m not, I make mention to the TSA agent that I’d like to keep an eye on my stuff. I make this request politely with a smile on my face and good eye contact. It has never been a problem until now.

On my last four trips the various TSA agents not only became irritated with my request, two of them (two separate airports) walked me over to desks further away from my stuff for no apparent reason just to press the point that they were in control and who was I to make such a request. One of them held me at the desk for 5 minutes for no reason, long enough for many people to paw over my stuff on the conveyor belt.

As many of you know there is no one watching the conveyor belt to make sure that the right person picks up the right stuff. This has always been a logistical problem with air travel (since metal detectors started to be used) and isn’t the fault of TSA. However, because TSA can cause a bottleneck in getting through they can exacerbate the problem. They should at least acknowledge the problem rather than making it worse.

I didn’t make a scene and I eventually got all my stuff but not before it was piled up with other people’s stuff in such a way that someone could have easily walked off with my computer, phone, or camera gear.

This is both a logistical problem but also a social one: two times TSA agents not only failed to acknowledge my concern but made concerted efforts to show they had power by making it harder or me to see my stuff.

That pushed me over the hump and now I’m dead set against TSA unionizing. Frankly I think TSA should be dismantled and redesigned with better logistics, better screening, and better training.