Tech Post #10

Snoozing And Losing: A Blockbuster Failure

This article is about the collapse of Blockbuster. In the beginning, Blockbuster had overtaken the local movie stores; "Goliath didn’t just beat David, he obliterated him simply by showing up — and then danced on his grave while entertaining his children." They thought they were unbeatable; however, Dish Network is now "buying Blockbuster’s assets out of bankruptcy court for around $230 million — in cash." Blockbuster's fall should be no surprise according to the article because they had plenty of time to combat Netflix. Netflix slowly grew and grew with not even a glance from Blockbuster until it was too late. "It wasn’t until 2004 — six years after Netflix launched — that Blockbuster realized it needed to enter the online DVD rental-by-mail space. By then, Netflix was already turning a profit and Redbox had just launched. Blockbuster was already dead — they just didn’t realize it yet." Blockbuster's fall from its reign is "such a great example of a company resting on its laurels and getting blindsided. But it’s hardly even fair to call it a “blindsiding”. Blockbuster probably could have done dozens of things to counter the rise of Netflix in that initial six year space." This goes to show that other big guns like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. may seem unbeatable but in reality they aren't if they don't keep up with the changing times. 
I chose this article because I grew up going to Blockbuster, and I thought it was interesting to see why Blockbuster fell so hard. I feel as if this will effect culture today it is showing how other big companies need to keep changing and evolving in order to stay on top.
Here is the link to the full article: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/make-it-a-blockbuster-night/

Tech Post #9

South Park Scares You Into Reading Apple’s Terms And Conditions

I found this article on Tech Crunch, and it was about a recent episode of South Park. This article talks about how when you download a new version of iTunes, you have to agree to the terms of service. Most people just scroll to the bottom and click agree because who wants to read a document that is at least 50 pages in length. In the South Park episode, it shows an extreme (non-plausible) situation that occurred when one of the characters didn't read the terms of service. Although the show was just poking fun at this topic, I feel as if it made a good point. I know that there are many people who don't read the terms of service that pop up when you are trying to download something because I am one of those people. I know the situation in the show couldn't occur but who knows what you could be agreeing to when we don't read the terms of service before we agree to them. I feel as if this could effect today's society because even though the show was poking fun at the outrageous lengths of terms of service documents and what could happen when you don't read them, it still proved a good point and could make people think twice about clicking agree without reading what they are agreeing to. I also feel that this show and other shows could raise awareness, in a sense, about changes we need to make in our lives that revolve around technology.
Here is the link for the whole article: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/28/south-park-scares-you-into-reading-apples-terms-and-conditions/