Weathers will probably do more like one year, according to The Smoking Gun, although the time will be hardened by the fact that Weathers will have the least intimidating criminal record in the joint. "What are you in for?" "Mugging the shit out of a bunch of people. You?" "I stole DVDs from the mail and put them into my backpack everyday at work, until Netflix tipped off the USPS and I was busted on a surveillance video. I was caught RED HANDED. Geddit? Ha?"

A page of the plea agreement reprinted by the Smoking Gun refers to "the 3,012 recovered DVDs," implying that Weathers couldn't even fence the property he stole from the DVD mailing service, which is just as well: He faced $38,000 in restitution if he couldn't cough up the goods. Worst. Heist thriller. Ever.

(Pic via HackingNetflix on Flickr)

I believe it's more complicated than that — probably transactions that happened *after* the upgrade that they now need to reconcile manually.

The theory would explain why Netflix seemed to know it received DVD returns from particular customers, but can't figure out what next from the queue to ship. (Photo by AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed

Dear [Netflix customer],

Our shipping system is unexpectedly down. We received a DVD back from you and should have shipped you a DVD, but we likely have not. Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible, and we will keep you posted on the status of your DVD shipments.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. If your DVD shipment is delayed, we will be issuing a credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. The credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement.

Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.

-The Netflix Team

(Photo by Seth Anderson)

• Internet service providers: Comcast is a cable provider and AT&T has its U-Verse and HomeZone IPTV offerings, and both companies have their own set-top boxes and on-demand movie and television offerings. Plus the two generally compete only against each other in many markets. Which means neither has much of an incentive to increase speeds to those that could provide the Roku box with the HDTV signal it reportedly supports. Comcast has shown that it will throttle bandwidth for specific applications, and then lie about it to the FCC.
• Movie studios: I've used the Netflix feature to watch movies online and the selection isn't particularly impressive. Reports peg available titles at 10,000, with a handful of television shows thrown in. Netflix will have to go over the heads of the DVD distributors it has relationships with directly to the studios if it wants current content.
• Surly adopters: Fool me once with Akimbo, the Apple TV, or Unbox over TiVo, shame on you. Fool me twice with the Roku? Shame on you. The gadgetophile market is probably wary of cluttering their home theaters with yet another clunker. The key will be to get the chipset Roku has developed for the box built into new TVs. Only then can Netflix count on the kind of mainstream audience that will convince the studios and the ISPs that the project can't be ignored.

Six Apart's offices seem pretty ordinary to me. Their meeting space is *tiny*. Googleplex's niceties are all about enticing their workers to stay at work longer — yeah, that's real HAWT!. Valleywag offices look like a dump to me.

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