• All Profiles rental history will be added into the main account rental history
• Your additional Profile Queues will be eliminated. If you would like to keep a copy of each Profile Queue we recommend that you print them out.
• Profiles movie ratings and Profiles Friends connections will no longer be available
• You will not be able to transfer your Profiles data to a separate new account

This seems like a particularly consumer-hostile move from a company that, in the past has had a fairly positive reputation for customer service. As a subscriber and heavy-user of this feature myself, I feel particularly betrayed. The unceremonious termination of my 100+ item queue and 1000+ ratings make it seem like Netflix really doesn’t give a damn about anything but it’s bottom line. As Ars Technica points out, replicating a 4 disc at-a-time account, which costs roughly $24/month, with two 2 disc at-a-time accounts will cost $28/month, or $4/month for Netflix’s bottom line.  Adding insult to injury, Netflix reasons for the change in policy are simply “…to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers,” with no other details provided.  This kind of bullshit PR-speak only serves to aggravate customers like myself who are left wondering how eliminating already-in-place features helps improve the site.

There are, unsurprisingly, many upset Netflix customers pouring onto the web to complain about this.  Some resources and petitions they have thrown together include:

• Get Satisfaction: Netflix to break homes by eliminating profiles
• Digg: Netflix Eliminating Profiles
• Hacking Netflix: Netflix Eliminating Account Profiles
• Protest Netflix’s Cancellation of Profiles Petition
• SaveNetflixProfiles.com
• Netflix Community Blog: Profiles feature going away

Even if you’re not a current Netflix subscriber, you should take note of how Netflix responds to this issue. If you are a current subscriber, I encourage you to visit the websites above, sign petitions, and complain to the company about this blatant disregard for the value of their customers.

Update: they came to their senses and decided to keep them after all.

BTW, I’m loving the level of interaction Trent and the band are having with their fans now that they shed their label.

Update: The whole album has now been released for free. Details.

From October 5 through November 16, SCI FI whets Battlestar fans’ appetites every Friday night with Razor Flashbacks during all-new episodes of Flash Gordon. All the flashback clips will be available on SCIFI.COM immediately after broadcast.

These [...] roughly two-minute segments tell the story of young William “Husker” Adama’s rookie Viper mission during the first Cylon war. In addition to fighting for his very survival against relentless Cylon centurions, Adama makes a terrifying discovery that will come back 40 years later to threaten him, the crew of the Pegasus and the survival of the human race.

This footage won’t be shown in the actual primere of the two-hour Razer ‘movie’ that premiers on Saturday, November 24th. Check out the official site for more details. Also: mark your calendars for ‘Awesome’ on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

This is totally what I always wanted to do when I was working as a Genius.

The first episode of the TAL Showtime TV Program broadcast this past Thursday (3/22) night. If like me and most people I know, you don’t have cable, you can check out for free from Showtime (or maybe hit up a torrent).

The first episode, Reality Check was quite good… just the same TAL as ever really. Same moving stories, same great music direction, same Ira Glass… just now with pictures. This all makes sense since the stories for this pilot also appeared on the radio show (to save production costs before the show was picked up). I particularly liked the shots of Ira sitting in the middle of nowhere with a desk and an old mic, it looks like this will be a reoccurring theme.

The official TAL website just got a (much needed) makeover as well with lots of nice new features like RSS feeds and better organization. Be sure to check out this ‘much fuller decription‘ of what they’re trying to do with the TVs show and these previews for the first season.

If you’re still starved for TAL linkage check out this Chris Ware animated clip about using fake video cameras in grade school from Episode 4. Also be sure to listen to the weekly radio show on your local NPR station or via this iTunes podcast.

The first six episode season of TAL broadcasts on Showtime on Thursdays at 10:30 PM ET/PT (see the schedule here).

(Some links via Kottke.)

Of course now that Arcade Fire are the “hottest band in music” according to CMJ and #2 on the Billboard (only trailing a dead guy) my whole indie world is experiencing a bit of turbulence…

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one puzzled by this so MacWorld has posted a little editor debate arguing each side of the issue. Needless to say, I’m with robg on this one.

Besides the points made in that article, I’d add that there are other services that do the same thing better (for example, YouTube’s cooperate overlords at Google Video; which allows easy downloading of videos for computer, iPod, or PSP). It would seem to me that reasons for YouTube’s popularity was because of the degree to which the service turned a blind eye to copy-writed content.

This week’s episode is a rerun of one of my favorite episodes ever: #61 Fiasco! featuring the interview about a state production of Peter Pan. It’s quite possibly the funniest radio bit or interview I’ve ever heard and a great place to start if you’ve never heard the show. But get it fast because “each podcast/downloadable episode is free for exactly one week, beginning Monday.”

Subscribe in iTunes now!

First up is Robin’s Big Date, which stars Sam Rockwell (who, it would seem, can make just about any character awesome) as ‘The Bat-Man’ and Justin ‘Mac’ Long as Robin. It’s about The Bat-Man barging in and ruining Robin’s date. It’s pretty much everything the real Batman movies aren’t. Which is to say: hilarious. Watch it here! (Hat tip to Cinematical.)

Next: Consent written and directed by Jason Reitman. He’s not a household name yet but might be soon enough if he continues to put out great films like Thank You for Smoking. Be a responsible adult and get those consent forms signed (meaning watch it). (Hat tip to Kottke.)

This image is proceeded by a fake IM conversation (in iChat, no less) that goes like this:

Student 1: prof. Reid went off on me again
Student 2: what happened?
1: prof. Reid happened
2: you quoted Fox NEWS again?
1: I gave both sides

Yeah, because you know ‘prof. Reid happens’ when you quote Fox News! Disgusting…

Really, I think that’s enough to keep me from ever watching Fox News (not like there was a chance of that before). I guess I just ‘can’t handle the truth.‘

It appears that the wonderful people working on Battlestar Galactica aren’t content to merely keep putting out the best damn show on TV. They’re going to put the same awesome stuff on the web in a series of webisodes, filling the timeline after the end of Season 2.5 but before the première of Season 3 (Friday 10/6!).

The series, titled ‘The Resistance’ will be released in ten short episodes every Tuesday and Thursday night until the première of Season 3 with the first one up right now for your enjoyment.

I’m planning on saving them all to watch in one go before the première, so don’t spoil any secrets for me. Also, obviously, don’t watch this if you haven’t finished Season 2.5 yet (or started watching the series at all); you know who you are (and you should be ashamed of yourselves).

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Here are a few of my favorites:

Webtoons

• Homestar Runner – The 800 pound gorilla of webtoons. This toon has been around for quite a few years and has hours and hours of content available for browsing. If you haven’t seen it before you probably won’t get it (e.g. why is Strong Bad such an ass?) but after checking out the First Timer page watching a few episodes of Strong Bad’s Emails (I recommend Japanese Cartoon & Dragon) you won’ t be able to stop.
• Making Fiends – A cartoon from a former animator on South Park, this comic tells the story of the hateful Vendetta and the always kind (but oblivious) Charlotte, who always manages to mess up Vendetta’s schemes. The paper-cutout art is probably my favorite thing about this comic.
• Space Tree – A rather new comic is totally off the wall. It’s about Space Tree, a tree, in space. It makes no sense but that’s okay, you’ll laugh anyway.

Webcomics

• Diesel Sweeties – A pixilated robot romance comic. This comic is about as ‘indie’ as it gets. You should probably start from Comic #1.
• Elephantitis of the Mind – A comic of random thoughts by Asher Sarlin, a fellow Oxy student. No plot line here, but you should check out some of my favorites.
• The Joy of Tech – A tech (and often Mac) related toon. It often parodies the newest dirt on Microsoft too. Hard to go wrong with that.
• Penny Arcade – This is a comic about video gaming that has been around for a long time. Gabe and Tycho don’t really hold back their opinions when something sucks, which is nice (in comparison to traditional gaming journalism). However, the comics are often accompanied with long posts linking to other articles which much be read in order to understand the comic. This sound like a bad thing but it actually makes the comic more interesting because it’s very specific humor (not bland vanilla stuff like in newspaper comics).
• PvP – This is about as close as a webcomic gets to a real newspaper comic, in fact, it’s author has started offering it to newspapers free of charge (inverting the traditional publishing model). Anyway, it’s about a small cast of characters who work at a videogame magazine.

A lot of these thrive on content that wouldn’t ever work for a family newspaper, so reader beware I guess. Let me know if I missed one of your favorites.