Netflix, in a move that was controversial to the Internet and absolutely no one else, recently changed its subscriber plan: if you wanted both DVDs sent to your house and streaming, it would now cost a minimum of $16. There was a lot of wailing, teeth gnashing, and predictions that Netflix had just priced itself out of most people’s wallets, even though a DVD-only and streaming only plan were available at $8 each.

So, how did it work out?
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One of the problems of living in Scunthorpe-on-Cribbage or wherever the heck the English keep their version of hicks is that England, being a socialist nightmare, has British Telecom, a monopoly that acts all hostile towards competition and stuff, not like our own American companies, especially that one that was never, ever a monopoly, AT&T. It makes getting decent Internet service a spot of bother (that’s British for “enormous pain in the ass”).

Fortunately, a ruling has been handed down to end this. Or, well, maybe not. Let’s have some schadenfreude!

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We love FCC rulings around here, because everybody involved gets to weigh in, and you get to see big companies whine like Eric Cartman when a ruling doesn’t go their way. In this case, the FCC told AT&T and Verizon to STFU and GTFO over data roaming: the FCC has ruled that they have to let smaller carriers use their infrastructure under “commercially reasonable terms”. In other words, consumers, especially in rural areas, get more choice.

Their reaction?

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A lot of data travels over the Internet. Think about all the stuff on the internet being sent back and forth: Netflix movies, emails, chat messages, Facebook photo updates, Groupons, pirated media, and porn, being as that’s why the Internet was born according to Trekkie Monster.

But how much data do a billion or so people using the Internet constantly actually upload and download in the course of their casual Internet usage? A few hundred terabytes? Perhaps even a few hundred of the rarely seen wild petabyte?

Think bigger. In fact, think a lot bigger.

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Finally, some good news from Japan. Akiko Kosaka, an exchange student at the University of California at Riverside, was terrified to discover that her village, Minamisanriku, was almost completely destroyed by the tsunami, with half of its 17,000 residents missing. Her little sister was confirmed safe, but the rest of her family hadn’t been heard of, and the mayor stated he had been lucky to get out alive. Kosaka feared the worst.

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The Japanese earthquake and tsunami has been possibly the most well-documented tragedy in history. News organizations right down to private citizens with cell phones have shown us what it’s like to be in the center of a natural disaster. Here are the five videos that are most compelling.

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No one’s ever accused Bing of being refreshingly original. And it’s because Microsoft’s search engine basically just recycles other ideas and tries to sell them as its own.

Take its latest venture: Bing Deals. It’s a whole lot like all those other deal sites that have emerged thanks to Groupon and co. In fact, Microsoft didn’t even really make its own deal site; it just partnered with deal aggregator Dealmap.com.

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Google hasn’t been the same for some time now. Back when it first launched, it was like Google was reading your mind, taking you to exactly where you wanted to be. Then there was a problem: other websites and companies began reading your mind too, and Google’s. They tried to figure out every possible search that you’d ever have and design their content in such a way that it’d flood the front pages of Google, draw in hoards of visits and generate dollar upon dollar of ad revenue.

Great for them, not so good for you. Not if you wanted to actually search and find valuable results, anyway.

Well Google’s addressing the situation.

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The Internet has so much potential, but isn’t quite harnessing it yet. A worldwide communication system that can bring us real-time video and information from anywhere in the world should really be capable of delivering live sporting events that we may not be able to get on TV. Like out-of-market football, baseball, basketball, etc. And if it could do it without a rigid, season-long subscription where I have to pay for every single game of the season even if I only want to watch a particular team or match-up, that would be really great.

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