Word: speak
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...voracious consumer of movies and TV shows old and new, the Netflix mail-order rental service is both useful and annoying. It is also addictive. I speak as a four-at-a-time subscriber who carefully manages and updates his queue of titles, closely monitors their return to the Netflix depot and waits anxiously for the postman to bring the next stash. Here, based on five months of obsessive use, of pleasure and frustration in roughly equal amounts, are five ways to improve the effectiveness of America's favorite online movie provider. (Read Richard's final analysis: "Why Netflix Stinks...
...Perk up your algorithms. The success of any online retail service depends in part on steering customers to products similar to the ones they've bought - guided browsing, so to speak. How does a company read your mind? Through computer algorithms, which sift through the universe of possibilities to determine that B, C and D would attract the interest of people who bought A. Amazon.com's algorithms result in some astute suggestions; Netflix's suck. If, on the search line, you type in the documentary Joe Louis: For All Time, you'll be directed to the French omnibus film Paris...
...released a statement calling Estemirova's killing "monstrous.") She was well aware that her work jeopardized her safety. "In Chechnya, the government creates an atmosphere of fear and mistrust," Estemirova said in 2007 as she accepted a human-rights award. "Those who witness abuse keep silent, for if they speak, they can soon become a victim." By silencing this woman who spoke, her killers have victimized everyone...
...wasn't like this before. In normal times, Iranians speak quite openly and publicly about politics and their government. Visitors to Tehran are regularly surprised by the level of candor and outright griping on the part of the citizenry. Taxi cabs in particular are hotbeds of sedition, roving confessional booths for those with grievances against the regime. With the crackdown ratcheting up by the day, such conversations became less common, taxi rides turned more subdued. Citizens fell back on the old Persian habits of evasion and mistrust. For all of the bravery witnessed in the gathering crowds, many us felt...
Each year, Italians take part in a midsummer ritual to honor the victims of the Mafia and speak out against the scourge of organized crime. From Palermo to Torino, politicians, church leaders and youth groups gather to mark the July 19, 1992, assassination of anti-Mob magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who was killed along with five bodyguards in a meticulously planned car-bombing outside his mother's apartment in the Sicilian capital...