The Netflix prize for movie rankings has been awarded with the winner being BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos. This is very cool, but since it’s Monday I think we need a good dose of reality. So here is the first comment on the New York Times Bit blog:
This sounds like an interesting project, but they ought to emphasize acquiring more movies for their online streaming than telling people what to watch. – kt
Good work, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, but could you work on that tube that delivers my potato chips without me having to get up to go to the kitchen?
Seriously. And will you please stop working on quantum computers? I want a flying car already!
Don’t you know? Quantum computers ARE flying cars. Flying cars in superposition (so as to avoid traffic accidents, of course.)
To be fair to the commenter, I read about BellKor’s result with interest, but it didn’t convince me to subscribe to Netflix. Having the content I want available via streaming would convince me. Netflix might be better off offering a $1 million prize to a brilliant team of attorneys. However, solving the legal issues of their copyright problems is a more difficult problem than predicting movie preferences.