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Mathematica 6 out this week?

I'm really hoping that Mathematica 6 is released this week.  The NKS 2006 conference runs from June 16-18, followed immediately by the International Mathematica Symposium 2006, from June 19-23.  I will fearlessly predict that they will release version 6 to coincide with these events. 

Why? If you look at the program [pdf] for IMS 2006, a number of tracks are on new features in version 6, so it seems like a release is in store.  If you track normal times between major Mathematica releases, we are about due.

As a Mathematica user since 1.2, I'm hoping for lots of big improvements.

Update: well, it is June 29th, 2006, and no announcement on MMa 6.  I guess we'll have to wait until the Wolfram Technology Conference in October.  There are several training classes on new features in version 6 being taught at the conference, so that's an upper bound on the release date.

In the mean time, the Eclipse based IDE called Wolfram Workbench looks interesting. I just wish I were a "Premiere" customer so I could try it out.

Update 2: The Wolfram Technology Conference wasn't the release date either.  Go figure.  So now I've got no idea.  Even weirder, they made all the participants sign NDA's so there any talk about what was said at the conference.

Update 3: My latest guess is March 15, 2007. 
See here.

The New York Times has an interesting article about Netflix.  The angle is that it is all about servicing the long tail...

Out of the 60,000 titles in Netflix's inventory, I ask, how many do you think are rented at least once on a typical day?

The most common answers have been around 1,000, which sounds reasonable enough. Americans tend to flock to the same small group of movies, just as they flock to the same candy bars and cars, right?

Well, the actual answer is 35,000 to 40,000. That's right: every day, almost two of every three movies ever put onto DVD are rented by a Netflix customer.

Link via Dave.