I have to agree (from 1/7): http://www.crooks.net/node/119

Why a viewing window at all? Let me watch it at least once. If a viewing window, make it 48 or 72 hours.

Also, Apple needs to figure out how to offer a Netflix-style scheme as well.

Channel 4's online service gives you 48 hours for downloads last time I checked, although I usually stream stuff now they've added the option. 24 hours is mad.

What with this and the FT's brilliant suggestion (which you covered two posts down) that we'd be better off with Jupiter's solar year of 12 Earth years, because end-of-year bonuses would better reflect quality investment decisions, I think it's time to stop wasting billions on going to Mars, and start figuring out how to make rockets big enough that we can adjust Earth's orbit and spin to better suit the modern world. Can't be that technically difficult to adjust a planet's orbit (though it might be costly), we've been placing satellites bang in orbit for years.

People and businesses move all the time when the old location no longer suits. Why shouldn't we do the same for the Earth? We'd solve the global warming problem too. Admittedly rather drastically if we moved more than a few thousand miles.

Only problem: fewer birthdays and Christmasses. I remember thinking during a phase when I was obsessed with the solar system how cool it would be to live on Mercury and have a birthday every 80 days. We might face a kids' strike if we told them they'd now only get presents once or twice during their entire childhood.

I'm OK with the 24 hour window thing. Instead of a 27 hour window, I'd much prefer it if:

1) Streamed movies from my cable company didn't consistently crap out 15 minutes before the climax.

2) Fifty percent of the DVD's I get from Netflix didn't have scratches that prevented us from watching the last 15 minutes.

For all the advances in picture quality, I've gotta admit that I yearn for the days of analog tape and transmission, whereby a a glitch of any size was always gracefully recoverable.

I've gotta admit that I yearn for the days of analog tape and transmission, whereby a a glitch of any size was always gracefully recoverable.

How soon we forget the joys of a tape tearing or folding over onto itself or the gears inside the cassette stripping. Then there were the tapes that weren't recorded strong enough so the image kept tearing, usually at the top. (Then there was the time I was rewinding a tape and the power went out; the VCR recovered but the tape didn't.)

I have heard of an attorney in NYC who charged 27 hours ...he worked all day, then worked on a flight to CA, and gained another 3 hours...as you can imagine, it was not a fixed fee project -)