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?
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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.