Ireland: A while back, I posted ‘Room for an Irish Netflix’, which plugged the idea of opening a version of the Netflix concept for Ireland. Well, over on the taint.org QT forum, JCorbett says: ‘ DVDRentals.ie is what you’re looking for!’
Sure enough, it looks pretty good — 20 eurons a month, and a reasonable selection (considering they just started).
But it limits how many DVDs you can get out in a month to 8. IMO, that’s unnecessary — nobody can watch DVDs and turn them around through the postal system that quickly!
Also, the browsing interface is lousy — I’d suggest licensing some kind of metadata from IMDb or similar, so people can get third-party reviews, comments, ‘my favourite action movie’ lists, that kind of thing.
Can’t tell much more, as the FAQ page doesn’t work on Mozilla/Firebird for some damn reason.
Sick: Anger as contestants hungry for money go begging on TV (Irish Indo) (via forteana):
A reality television show in which 12 young Russian contestants have to scrounge, beg and even steal to win a pension for life, is being filmed in Berlin.
In a city already struggling with bankruptcy and large numbers of asylum-seekers, police and residents have been quick to condemn Golod, Russian for ‘hunger’. The contestants live in a container without money or food to survive; none of them speaks German. ‘Golod’ is proving a huge hit with Moscow television viewers, thousands of whom tune in at nine each evening to find out how Karina, Anastasia and 10 other photogenic contestants are faring on the mean streets of a foreign city.
Spam: Latest Pew Internet report on spam. Pew Internet surveys are very good. This one notes that ‘25% of America’s email users say they are using email less because of spam. Within that group, most say that spam has reduced their overall use of email in a big way.’
Mafia: A mafia hacker tells his story to Wired (Simson Garfinkel via FoRK).