Re:Netflix Progress Prize Awarded
by byrneseyeview on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @08:16PM
(#393755)
As for Netflix, it's difficult for me to believe this is really about research and not about increasing their profitability.
Are you really more concerned with the purity of their motives that the results of their actions? I would rather interact with people who can accomplish stuff for selfish reasons than people who fail hard but feel good for trying.
I'm not concerned, I just said it's great that after 2 years of work, we've seen $100k come from it. That is wonderful news.
Re:Netflix Progress Prize Awarded
by plinkplonk on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @10:13PM
(#393887)
Why is this downmodded? I can understand people disagreeing, but it is a well articulated point.
I downvoted after reading the first sentence.
Sorry, you'll have to excuse that I'm not immediately a huge fan of corporations who give small amounts of money for significant amounts of research that ultimately go back to benefit the corporation.
While the statement that followed was at least reasonable, that line struck me as really obnoxious.
Apparently, they're going to give all of the code out, which is good to hear. I'm proud of the machine learning community for that. As for Netflix, it's difficult for me to believe this is really about research and not about increasing their profitability.
I could be way off. Maybe $1 million over the course of 2+ years is a heck of a lot of money for a team of developers (selected from 35,000 teams), which will be used to generate more profit for NetFlix. Who knows. I'm glad that so far over 2 years, $100k was given out. That's good to see.