07:58 – UPS showed up yesterday with seven or eight large boxes, so we now have about two thirds of the components needed to build the first batch of biology kits. I have a few more small purchase orders to get out this week for the biology kits, but otherwise I’ll be working heads-down on the forensics book re-write.
I signed up for Amazon Prime yesterday, and last night Barbara and I watched our first Amazon streaming video. It was the first episode of Inspector Lewis Series 4, which Netflix doesn’t have on DVD, let alone streaming.
Pretty clearly, Amazon is doing everything they can to make it difficult for people to watch free streaming videos on their service. Instead, they really, really want you to pay for the video. Incredibly, there is no queue for free streaming titles (although there is a queue for purchased or rented videos). To watch a free video, you have to search for the title each time. For example, after we watched episode one of Lewis with our Roku, we switched back over to Netflix to watch an episode of Scrubs. To watch the second episode of Lewis, I’ll have to search for it again, using the arrow keys and virtual keyboard on the Roku.
Amazon’s attempt to force people to pay for videos that they can watch for free leads to a ridiculous situation. When I clicked on the first episode of Lewis, Amazon gave me a choice. As a Prime member, I could (a) watch the video for free, or (b) pay $2.99 to watch it. Guess which one I chose. At least the default option was to watch it for free. I wonder how many people choose the second option.
I read about people who are dropping Netflix streaming and substituting Amazon Prime streaming, which strikes me as ridiculous. Not only is Amazon’s catalog a tiny fraction of Netflix’s, but Amazon intentionally makes it as hard as possible to find and watch free videos. We’ll be treating Amazon Prime streaming as a supplement to Netflix, but nothing more. If we want to watch something specific and Netflix doesn’t have it, we’ll try Amazon. But that’s about it. And I’m sure that that’s exactly what Amazon hopes we’ll do.
RBT wrote:
Actually, all Amazon wanted was the $79 yearly fee. They couldn’t care less about you watching any videos. Though if you pay often enough for them, they like that, too.
Actually Amazon loses money on Amazon Prime.. the free fast shipping alone is a loser. It’s also providing free ebook rentals and free streaming (even though not at Netflix level) for only $7 a month, you can’t complain too much.
What Amazon is doing is just like someone commented yesterday.. it’s a Costco membership free. That gives a small “lock in”. Once you pay, you tend to think “Oh, I paid, I better use it!” so you browse and buy more.
Of course I laugh because I get so much stuff from Amazon that it’s beyond a no-brainer. Even a lot of groceries now.. I just find out which ones are a real savings. For that, a Chrome plugin for CamelCamelCamel helps identify the stuff that’s underpriced.
Just a thought about Greek austerity… since the biggest expense of the government, other than the bonds, is salaries and pensions, why not do the following: pay each salary/pension up to say 500 Euro a month in Euros. Pay the rest in 10 year Greek bonds at say 5% interest. The people are free to resell the bonds if they want to cash them in, but obviously for a big discount.
Then the civil servant strikers have nothing to complain about… they will be hypocritical if they complain the Greek bonds are worthless, because those are the very same strikers are saying Greece should just borrow more money. They just won’t like the loans coming from their own pocket.
I signed up for the first free month and must say was pretty underwhelmed by the selection of movies and TV shows available. Not anywhere near the level of netflix movie wise and for TV I prefer Hulu. even with all its dodgy limitations.
On a separate note the recently departed megauploads was able to deliver latest content with nary a hitch, so for free I was getting a better experience than all my paid services (Hulu, netflix and Apple for rentals). Just saying is all.
The hoops I have to jump through to get these shows on the one device (to rule them all) an Apple TV 2 is just annoying. Here’s a tip to Hulu and Amazon, take the netflix client approach and deliver a solution for every platform, regardless of the conflicts (for e.g. Hulu has a ATV2 client available but apple wont push it out as it could impact it’s sales of TV shows).
A lawyer acquaintance, whose best friend has been a UPS delivery guy for about 30 years, said that from November through about middle January, 99% of their deliveries are from Amazon. Makes one wonder what the sender distribution is during the rest of the year. Seems like Amazon might be ahead by just buying out UPS.
Remember when people were saying that Bezos was actually crazy and Amazon would never break even, let alone make money?
I just updated the Exact Audio Copy ripper on my computer. It popped up a dialog telling me the 0.99beta5 version I was running was old, so I went out to check, and there have been several newer versions since 7 May 2009. But it seems that there was a radical overhaul after the 0.99beta5 release, and the current version is the first stable one.
Fair warning: write down all of your settings before upgrading (that will be no small task). I managed to get a German language version installed, which–by default–started the setup wizard, and I quit that, the consequence of which seems to have been erasing all my previous setups. Or maybe just upgrading lost all of those, I don’t really know.
Don’t bother with the GD3 metadata database plug-in. It wants $8 for a lifetime membership. No thanks. FreeDB has always done me just fine.
Every blooming setup was changed, and I just did an experimental rip, and the darned thing is not passing encoding to LAME, even though it looks like it should. There is now a lot more to EAC, especially much more metadata support (including album pics and lyrics). Menu structure has changed some–just enough to be annoying.
I suppose I will get it all worked out eventually, but wish I had been smart enough to preserve my setups before upgrading.
By the way, if you, too, manage to accidentally download the German language version, the language choices are found in EAC Einstellungen > Allgemein > EAC Sprachauswahl.
A little more Internet perusing indicates that installing an EAC version later that 0.99beta5 will not carry over earlier settings, because of the significant changes made in the program. A good 90% of the earlier settings are still useful, so I still recommend logging the old settings before installing the newer version. You can just enter most of the old settings into the proper boxes.
Lots of improvements that all seem to work. Including leading zeros on track numbers. Also including correct tagging information being entered by EAC itself. For a long while, it was necessary to have LAME do the tagging, with the entry of a long additional command line. Looks to me like EAC’s tagging is now working fine.