08:45 – Imagine my surprise the other night when I fired up Netflix streaming and was presented with a screen of legal jargon. The icons below the boilerplate offered only two options: “Accept” or “Email me a copy”. So I emailed myself a copy, and was then down to one option: Accept. Whatever happened to decline?
As I was about to click Accept–since there was no other choice–I noticed that I did indeed have another option. I could view the next screen of the contract. I was on screen 1. Of 102 screens! I clicked through the first few screens and got the general sense that (a) Netflix isn’t liable for anything, (b) that we can use the “service” only by doing exactly what Netflix says we’re allowed to do, and (c) that we’re under no circumstances allowed to sue Netflix. By this time, Barbara was getting impatient, so I just clicked on accept.
I can’t believe that Netflix lawyers actually think this “contract” would be enforceable, particularly since they don’t (as Microsoft does) force you to scroll all the way through the whole thing before you can accept it. My guess is that about 99.999% of Netflix streaming customers (including attorneys…) will simply click accept at the first screen. In no way does that constitute a meeting of the minds. Unconscionable, more like. What was Reed Hastings thinking?
12:15 – I had a kit to ship to an APO address this morning. I’d never done that with the Stamps.com software, so I decided to give it a try with USPS Click-N-Ship, not really expecting it to work. It worked, accepting my credit card as though there’d never been a problem.
I’m still making up solutions and filling bottles. I have everything I need to build another two or three dozen each of the biology and chemistry kits, so it’s just a matter of getting them assembled. I want to go into June with at least 60 biology kits and 90 chemistry kits ready to ship, and into July with at least the same number in finished-goods inventory. That means we’re going to have to label and fill thousands of bottles and build quite a few kits between now and then.