Netflix & IE

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Sun Apr 15 15:12:04 EDT 2007


On 4/15/07, brk <gnhlug at karas.net> wrote:
>>  "Netflix" is is a corporation, and as such, is incapable of having
>> "caring" or "not caring".  :)
>
> My dog's breath smells like dog food.

  Is the dog's name "Mittens"?

  While my remark may have seemed like a non sequitur, the point I was
making was that you were ascribing feelings of apathy to a
corporation, which is an impossibility.  We like to describe
corporations as "uncaring", but the reality is that corporations are
entities which exist for legal convenience only.  They are ultimately
under the control of people.  People vary a lot.  Sometimes, you can
find a person who cares, who is also in a position to do something
about it.  That may be all you need.

>>  Sure.  But there's no reason Firefox *on Windows* shouldn't be able
>> to work.
>
> You *know* this for a fact, or is it The World According to Ben?

  Fair point.  Insert "technical" between "no" and "reason" and it
would be more accurate, but it's still my take on the situation.  But
then, baring the original post, this whole thread has been mostly pure
speculation.  :)

> Or it might be that the movie studios are too paranoid and
> misinformed, and Netflix is merely caught in the middle.

  That's certainly a possibility, and not an implausible one.  But one
thing I've noticed about the media cartels is that they are *really*
stupid in most of their actions when it comes to this kind of thing.
It would not surprise me if they were not sophisticated enough to know
the difference between various web browsers.

  At the same time, I've encountered no end of stupid JavaScript that
does things like (incorrectly) check for Flash, or assume (!MSIE) ==
(!Windows).  It's depressingly common.  Often I can look at the code,
figure out the problem, and work around it to display the actual page
the programmer was supposedly "guarding".  Said page often works fine,
frequently even under Linux.

  There's also another possibility: The decision to allow only MSIE
was done from a support standpoint.  That is, they just don't want to
have to worry about testing with another browser, or providing
assistance to people using another browser.

  Without knowing more, my own personal take would be that any of
those are just as likely as anything else.  If it's the middle
possibility, a fix may be easy.  If it's the latter possibility, even
a small number of complaints may tip the balance to bring the middle
possibility into play.  If it's the first possibility, or something
else, then the complaints still do their job: Making it that much
harder to disregard the others.

> ... nor am I compelled to write and voice my opinions.

  But you are compelled to write and voice your opinions about how
you're not compelled to write and voice your opinions.  ;-)

-- Ben


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