I don't post this to make fun of someone's public speaking mistakes and blunders, god knows we are all used to that by now. I post this to point out to people that we need a leader who has the ability to think on his/her feet, to bring reason and logic to bear on a situation that is new to him/her. That is not McCain's strong suit. At least not for the past 21 years since he turned 50!

I am not condoning this behavior but if you want to check it out, email me (b e n @ a l t t e x t . com) and I can hook you up with some goods in game. Plus if you pay for a month of two we both get the following:

• You and I will earn triple the experience when grouped together.


• For every two levels of experience you earn, you can grant one level of experience to any one of my characters of lower level.


• You and I will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world.

Note: This offer not available to new parents, people who need a lot of sleep, or anyone with a history of addiction. :)

See this and more at FailBlog, thanks to Luke Francl.

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Ben,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Woohoo, the customer wins! Not only that, this feature was boosted out of obscurity to a place of prominence. I found several ways to use profiles that sound pretty cool (i.e. create genre profiles so that you don't have 3 depressing documentaries at home at any given time).

What is even worse than the dropping of this feature, however is the way Netflix has handled it. Today I received this email:

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

They aren't giving any indication as to why they are pulling the feature, just vague allusions to making the site better.

There is a petition to show Netflix that there is support for the feature. Not sure how far that will go in light of recent claims by the company that is is the "final decision". Here is more from the Hacking Netflix blog.

While discontinuing the Profiles feature is not desirable for the passionate folks who use it, the decision will ultimately benefit all Netflix members. By discontinuing the feature, we will be able to put more focus and resources site and service improvements that benefit everyone, consistent to how we have grown the service over the years.

Netflix makes it sound that only a few passionate users will be affected by this and perhaps the feature was under-utilized. And maybe the folks who use that feature and will be pissed off by this are not the most profitable customers for Netflix (i.e. they watch more movies and so cost Netflix more money) but they are forgetting an important thing here. These customers are the Netflix evangelists. I have told countless people about how I love Netflix since my membership began in August of 2000. I know I have been responsible for at least a half dozen people signing up and who know how many people have read my write-ups here on Alt Text.

Netflix is making a big mistake in killing the Profiles feature but are stepping into an even bigger blunder with the patronizing messaging around the decision. Read more on MetaFilter.

[Via Jason Bock]