Nearly 2000 Movies Taken Off Netflix

Checking the news this morning revealed that Warner is removing 1794 movies from Netflix’s streaming service. It reminded me of an argument I had a few years ago with my brother-in-law about Netflix having a future via streaming. My position was that the studios would eventually shut them down by starting their own pay services.

Sure enough it has begun despite Disney’s earlier exclusive deal with Netflix. A month ago (or was it two) I was notified that Warner had started a streaming service of its own, Warner Instant Archive for $9.99 a month. I occasionally purchase made to order DVDs from them so it was not a surprise to get an email from them. The collection is all older movies – for the moment. I expect that to change over time.

BTW, a lot of content is shown as available in 1080p HD. I can’t say it is tempting enough to merit $10 a month, which works out to $120 a year. Other services such as Hulu Plus and Crunchyroll are available at cheaper rates while Sony has a free service, Crackle. Maybe the service will fall in line with them eventually, but it is hard to tell.

Roku and PC are what’s supported at the moment via Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which was a surprise since Flash dominates the streaming industry. This is another nail in the coffin for Adobe’s fading standard as the Web transitions slowly due to Apple’s refusal to support Flash in iPads and iPhones.

Rumors have been floated that HBO might start an online only subscription service for their shows, so this is not an isolated incident. We’ll be seeing more fragmentation in services as time goes by since studio executives blame streaming for loss of revenues from DVD and Blu-rays. They want profits to go back up or go entirely to them. Hulu may not survive if it is finally sold off since the content won’t be included thanks to this kind of reasoning.

I wonder which studio will be next to launch their own service?

A Thank You Speech to Remember

Actually there are three, but the last is the most eloquent and appropriate acceptance speeches ever given. This is from Rush being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an ever controversial institution. I know I'll never forget Alex's passionate speech.

Area 88 Ep. 4: The Treacherous Sky

It may start with a bang, but this episode is more about revealing Shin’s mysterious past than aerial combat. When a mission goes wrong, the Japanese mercenary pilot finds himself alone in the desert. As he struggles to survive he is forced to remember how he ended up in a civil war far from his home.

Area 88 is at its best during slower moving episodes rather than the flashy dogfights. That’s rather ironic since I suspect most people who watched the series were attracted by the action. With the fourth episode, the main story begins in earnest. The questions of who is Shin and why is he here are finally answered.

An ominous tone is set early on when Shin Kazama lands his aging F-8E Crusader to refuel. Pickings have been slim in the skies lately and this causes the resident ace to press his luck. His mechanic Gustav warns him he’s being reckless, but the dollars associated with each kill matter more.

Makoto photographs all this as usual despite feeling something is wrong. Gustav, on the other hand, actually knows something is wrong. He can hear a malfunction within the Crusader’s turbojet engine.

Ah, There You Are Spring!

At long last we broke the 60 F mark today. This tied a record for the region set in 1951 according to the National Weather Service. I’m feeling slightly better so I’ll venture out to hike the driveway to the mailbox in a bit. Oh and there is sunlight coming out of a blue sky too. My thimble runneth over!

It has been a long, hard winter and I’m glad to see it finally end. Maybe people around the area will start cheering up. For awhile now it has seemed if everyone was either on edge or gloomy. Yesterday at the clinic there were a lot of comments about doubting spring would ever come only partially tongue in cheek.

Oh and the  right front brake has been fixed on the car, though it will be necessary to replace the other side soon. At least we don’t have to worry about braking anymore. Trying to down shift and not stop doesn’t work so well once you are in the city.

The world might end tomorrow (doubtful), but at least there is sun today.

Health 4-24-2013

Oy vey is the phrase that fits right now. I’d been feeling dizzy the last week or so and also noticed a little pain where the infection from February was but saw no swelling. That changed today.
The pain escalated until it was impossible to ignore this afternoon and so I checked again. It looks like the infection has returned. My suspicion is that it never fully went away because there has been no cat clawing me incident lately.

So it is off to the clinic tomorrow.

All of this is adding injury to insult thanks to one of the car’s rotors being shot. So no safe long distance travel and now this again. I’m going to have to get a ride from a neighbor at this rate.

What an exceedingly bad year this has been so far.

UPDATED 24 Apr: Back on antibiotics and the abscess is draining again. That's almost as nasty to type as witness happening. Thanks to what I learned last time, I got in early enough this time around. At least I now know why I've been out of it since Sunday!

A Very Strange Blogger Referral

I checked my stats today and found a referral that looked extremely suspicious:

mysql . removeyourcontent . com / russ_pornbb_spider / admin / hentai_check . php

An attempt to access this through a virtual machine asked for an admin login plus password and when I limited it to the domain I got an Apache 2 test page. Apache is one of the most common software packages that runs servers.

To my eyes, it appears to be a misconfigured spider checking web sites to see if it can drop porn spam. Either that or it is looking for porn. The hentai part of it relates to anime and the referral showed up on one of my anime reviews. Since I don’t have any hentai this is a dead end if it is a search.

Could it also be a way to get into an Apache server? I wish I knew more about the software to say.

Monkey Business (1931) Review

What do you do when you’ve had two smash hit movies adapted from Broadway plays? In the Marx Brothers’ case, they headed West for their first Hollywood film. The result is a movie that is very different from the previous two while cranking the insanity to eleven on a scale of one to ten. A wafer thin plot usually sinks a movie, but the Marx Brothers manage to stay afloat in this truly madcap comedy set on an ocean liner.

A mere four years after the revolutionary The Jazz Singer ushered in sound for movies, Monkey Business showed just how important the new technology was for comedy. There is no way the Marx Brothers would have been a success on the silver screen without hearing the machine gun patter of Groucho, the puns of Chico, or the harp playing of Harpo. Zeppo was always going to be along for the ride and could have been mute.

 

The movie begins with a creative way to present the credits: they roll on screen pasted on barrels. If you look closely, you can see that the photos were cut out and varnished on. So why barrels?

I’m tempted to say, “Why not?”

But there is a reason for them…