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Hey, Netflix! As a subscriber can I watch streaming movies and TV shows at home?
15 JanNot yet. Although Netflix opened this service up to all subscribers above the most basic subscription level, it still requires the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer 6 or above. Why? DRM, of course! The consumer’s friend!
I hope the studios are getting enough profit from DRM to make up for the losses they must be seeing from treating their customers so badly. As a Netflix subscriber, I should have access to all of the Netflix services covered in my subscription agreement, unless there’s some technical reason that it’s impossible for me to do so. In this case, there isn’t. The studios are turning my business away because I use an Apple computer.
Man, what a crazy industry.
From the Netflix FAQ:
A:Currently the Netflix Movie Viewer requires Internet Explorer Version 6 or later running on Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista. You’ll find more detail on current requirements on our Instant Watching System Requirements page.Our goal is for Netflix members to enjoy movies and TV shows on whatever screen they want. We’re required to use Digital Rights Management to protect movies watched instantly online, and right now we only have approval for this protection on Windows Operating systems, not the Mac.Apple does not license their DRM solution to third parties, which has made this more difficult, but we are working with the studios and content owners to gain approval for other solutions. As soon as a studio-approved DRM for the Mac is available to us, whether from Apple or another source, we will move quickly to provide a movie viewer that enables you to watch movies from Netflix instantly on your Mac.
In the meantime, you can use your account to watch instantly on any compatible PC, and Intel-based Macintosh computers can watch movies instantly using Boot Camp, Parallels, or Fusion to run Windows. And, your Macintosh is fully compatible with adding titles to the Instant Queue for Netflix-enabled players on your TV.
Philosopher: 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation
16 AugFrom the New York Times:
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.
…There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.
…“My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.”
Via Buzz Out Loud
Wade Rockett 