DVD DISTRIBUTOR, Netflix has been crippled for three days by a computer glitch that has severely limited the number of DVDs it can send out.

The outfit is refusing to say what has gone wrong but it seems that the unspecified problems tiggered all of the Los Gatos-based company's 55 shipping centres.

A spokesman said that the outfit was "not real big" on pointing fingers or attaching blame or airing this out in public, so we guess it must have been a senior manager who tipped their coffee over something important.

It is apparently the worst disruption in service since Netflix launched its DVD-by-mail subscription business nine years ago.

The IT crowd had tried turning it off and turning it on again and managed to fix some of the distribution centres up and running again late yesterday.

More than a third of the company's 8.4 million subscribers are currently waiting for DVDs held up by the problems. µ

L'INQ
AP