get out my ranting hat....

[fabricdragon]

i will not rant on this blog...... i will not rant on this blog.. i will not
ah to hell with it.

more details on my thorninthefoot blog of course, but in very brief

Comments

[moons_storm]

Roger is a computer programmer and writes these sorts of sites for a living. Adding 'closed captioning' to the search ability is not a simple fix. It's quite involved if the databases they have don't already have that information included, which I'm sure it doesn't.

I'll be honest, it really irks me when anyone says something is 'simple' when they don't do that thing for a living. It's making an assumption about a process you don't know much about, and it could be a very flawed assumption. Only Netflix and its programmers know how their database and search function are built, and since Roger has had to go back and fix these sorts of mistakes for other big sites to include search functions that didn't originally exist, it's usually a very costly, time-consuming endeavor.

[fabricdragon]

given that they have thus far added captions to less than 1% of their movies, despite laws requiring them to... a simple button link with "list of movies that are CC" would suffice.

an ANSWER to the emails requesting search features.... ANY ANSWER would be nice
how about "its not actually that simple, but i assure you we will try to find a way to let you know which movies are captioned" form letter.....

perhaps its not simple to do it 'right" but they will neither reply to requests, nor do anything at all to let people find out which movies are CC

and only raising the price on their disc subscriptions, which have captions, but not their streaming, which (in probablye violation of the law does not....)

oh, and their "why are you leaving us" form doesnt have options for writing in anything, so if your reasons are not what they say.? tough

[moons_storm]

Even putting that 'button' is difficult because it would do the same thing that an actual search button would: it would search the databases for the movies marked as closed captioned. If that sort of field does not exist (which I'm sure it doesn't), then such a 'simple' search with a click of a button is still an impossible task without a massive change to their database.

I had this whole thing written about the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which is what you're referencing, but then I thought, before I say anything, I really should read it. And I'm glad, because I can say that Netflix is NOT breaking any law

[fabricdragon]

they said they woudl have it by april. it is now november. they have not even bothered to say "sorry about the delay

[libwitch]

SUNY Albanys' moves weren't really super secret - it started being covered heavily in news (Albany Times Union, Higher Education News, NYT, Chronicle of Higher Education, among others) the day after their faculty were told (much to the disappointment of the University President. At the SUNY Faculty-wide Senate meeting two weeks after, the Binghamton University Senators forced, um, encouraged the current Chancellor to answer questions on the issue (she refused), but all the SUNY senators signed a statement in protest of the issue. The issue has since been further disseminated elsewhere....Of course *what* precisely is happening is a question. The faculty were told that the programs were being eliminated, and they would be not needed once the current students completed their studies. The President has denied this, and in official statements has used language, I believe that says they are being "suspended." This means in all liklihood that he has plans to drop them from being offered as majors but will continue to offer some

[fabricdragon]

the super secret part was in respnse to the WAY they gutted the departments...
the decision was made at a meeting that was in an odd location, with no public notice.. and the president later said "we couldnt find a large venue for it"

by the time anyone knew about it, it was a "done deal" . i didnt mean to imply that it was secret AT THIS point, only that they pretty much didnt do the usual thing of having a board meeting, or public hearings, or anything

wow. needed to edit that for clarity

[libwitch]

Oh well that is another story. Yeah - apparently there was a rather large cross faculty and administration committee that developed a process and suggestions for how to handle cuts if they were needed over two years or so.

And that is what was these ninja cuts were um, based off of. And then announced at a department wide meeting. And then later discussed to the whole faculty as a done deal at the faculty wide senate meeting. But yeah, there was never a discussion - it was just...an announcement. And now all the other campus are starting to glance around wondering what loops are in their policies that would allow their administration to pull such things.

It turns out there are quite a few things.

[arhyalon]

While not nearly as serious, a friend really wishes Netflix made their anime available subtitled online. It's subtitled on disk,but if there is a way to turn the subtitles on online, he hasn't found it.

You think it would be really easy to have it set up so that everything had captions.

[arhyalon]

Have you seen this on Netflix subtitles?
http://josherickson.org/2010/07/28/822/netflix-subtitles

[saffronrose]

I see nothing in any of your "rants" that I disagree with. When I was on Twitter, Marlee Matlin was giving various firms and agencies what-for about captioning and access for hearing-impaired folk. I'm sure she'd be happy to rip Netflix a new one.

There certainly does seem to be a rise in stupidity lately. Maybe the people involved need to read up on history.