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Comment: Re:As an Australian (Score 2) 271

by Ecuador (#46478265) Attached to: Amazon Hikes Prime Membership Fee

Hahaha, after years with Amazon Prime (from 2006) going back to a European country with no Prime was indeed quite annoying and I found it hard to explain to people what they were missing. Right now I am in the UK where there is prime, so I am again a subscriber although it is pricier and worse (way less stuff, higher prices, earlier cutoff for next day delivery) than the US.

Now, for me though, it was even more amazing than your description. It seems that it depends on where you live, but I was in NYC and I almost always got my stuff next day using free prime shipping. In fact, my wife ordered once a silver necklace at 2am before going to sleep, and at 9am, a mere 7 hours later a knock on the door woke us up. Sure enough, the necklace had arrived!

And that is not the only cool thing about it. I moved into a new house, went into amazon, the next day I had a projector, a projection screen (very heavy 120" with tripod), an home theater right at my doorstep. Free shipping. And a couple of months later my home theater amplifier had a problem and the manufacturer told me I had to ship it to their service (heavy amp, my own shipping cost), I wrote to Amazon asking whether they could help even if it was beyond the 1-month return window. They said they'd be happy to help and sent me a pre-paid return label, I sent it and got a full refund! Obviously, after that I bought all the big ticket items from Amazon. In fact, for computer parts I used to buy from NewEgg, but while their RMA was fast, you had to pay your own shipping back (also there was re-stocking fee IIRC on some items). But after having repeatedly excellent service from Amazon, I valued the fact that the item would arrive faster and would be shipped back free with a printable label if there was a problem for a full refund, so bought from Amazon even in cases where the price was somewhat higher.

Streaming is just an added bonus. The Prime experience was worth it before streaming and it was a real bargain at that price. Oh, some people complaining about bad experiences with Amazon, confuse Amazon with Amazon Marketplace - which is like ebay basically.

Comment: Re:The MP3 files are just fine (Score 1) 404

I am 35. The installers ranged from 25-45, they couldn't hear it. One said he might be hearing something, but he couldn't really tell because of the sound of the fan. My wife couldn't hear it. Neither has anyone else since then (they replaced it, it is no longer loud, but I can still hear it). Trust me, it is not the 50th percentile, it has happened to me way too often to hear things like laptop chargers at annoying volumes when no-one else can hear a thing, or have to stick their ear on it. It is not only whether you can perceive a 16 or 17kHz sound or not, it is how sensitive you are at that frequency and that is what is abnormal with me, I am way too sensitive for some very high frequencies to the point of e.g. some chargers or TVs being really annoying for me to be in the same room with. I know that in the army when they gave us an audible spectrum test only about 10% passed the entire range (I don't know how high they tested), so at 31 I was at least at that percentile, but as I said from experience I haven't actually found anyone as sensitive. For that test they did not release results, the reason I know it is another funny story. Supposedly if you did not pass the minimum range set you had ear damage and you were disqualified from the fire range. The trainees who processed the results mixed the minimum range with the maximum range and only qualified those who passed the latter, announcing that over 100 of the 120 people tested were quite deaf according to the tests. At least the higher ups figured out relatively quickly that something had gone wrong and everybody got to go to the fire range a day later... on foot... through a muddy "road".. 15 km away... boots, helmets, G3 battle rifles, flasks and all... most guys thought back to the good days when they were deaf and did not have to go shooting...


Hehe, I am close to the 1/10000% you say in some aspects. Well, at least in one aspect. Interesting story: I had an inverter installed for a solar panel array and when they switched it on, I stepped back "whoa, what is that loud whistling noise?" the installers were looking at me like I was crazy. Well, I told them, granted, it is very high pitch, a bit higher than, say, the whistling noise a CRT usually makes, I'd say over 15kHz, but it is really really loud, don't you feel anything - I can't even get close to the thing! The response was "what whistling noise the CRT makes???". I had to pull out my phone and download a spectrum analyzer. Sure enough, even the phone mic picked up a huge spike at 16.1kHz... But, I certainly can't tell compressed audio if it is over say 192kbps. I probably can't afford the playback equipment that can actually demonstrate the difference before even getting into the debate of whether it is perceivable by humans or not...

+ - Tesla can no longer sell card in NJ starting April 1st 2

Submitted by fructose
fructose writes "It looks like the automobile dealerships convinced the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission to approve a new rule requiring auto retailers to have a franchise agreement with an auto manufacturer in order to sell cars in New Jersey. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Tesla only got wind of a special meeting to determine new rules withing 72 hours of the scheduled time. Tesla now needs to get a law change to be able to sell cars directly to consumers there. Chalk up another win for old fashioned business models being threatened by new ideas."

Comment: Re:But He Isn't (Score 1) 276

by Ecuador (#46426949) Attached to: Should Newsweek Have Outed Satoshi Nakamoto's Personal Details?
I have a foreign name that is not common, perhaps there is another one or two in the US? So when a friend of mine happened to pass by Long Island city many years ago, he was pretty certain he found my phone number when he got a local hit when calling 411. Fortunately I don't share much with this other "ecuador" fellow that lived less than a mile away, because my friend called and asked for me and a lady told him I was in church. Knowing me, he responded "Ecuador? In church? That can't be right! What the hell is he doing there?" The answer was "He is giving a sermon...".

Comment: Holy Crap! (Score 1) 127

by Ecuador (#46385405) Attached to: The Ephemerality and Reality of the Jetpack
I saw that when I was a kid in the 80's on some TV program and as I grew up I was pretty sure that I had either watched something fictional, or I was too young and misunderstood. I mean, if they had that working in the 70s, they would have something even better in the 90s, 00s etc, instead of, ehm, pretty much nothing. Thanks for that! You verified my childhood memory and solved what was a "mystery" to me!!

Comment: Re:Dick? Maybe, but not your classical patent trol (Score 1) 258

by Ecuador (#46384633) Attached to: Inventor Has Waited 43 Years For Patent Approval
In case you are not joking, he means "Supreme Court Of The State Of". Americans love their acronyms for whatever reason even if it makes communication much harder. This specific example was modeled after the common acronym SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The United States), so people who know that could understand (screw the rest). In fact, SCOTUS is one of the more "appropriate" acronyms, as it actually means "Darkness" in Greek, which is where the current SCOTUS is taking us...

Comment: Re:why do people use WhatsApp? (Score 1) 136

by Ecuador (#46296819) Attached to: How Jan Koum Steered WhatsApp Into $16B Facebook Deal
I have unlimited texting in the UK, but most of my friends are in various countries. I don't like IMs, but when a friend suggested that there is an IM that requires no signup and shows you directly which of your phone contacts are on, I tried it out. So, it works well and you can post pictures and sound into the conversation, hence much better than SMS.

Comment: Re:Wow (Score 1) 110

by Ecuador (#46285937) Attached to: NVIDIA Launches GTX 750 Ti With New Maxwell Architecture

I'm no nVidiot, but 5-10% improvement at a substantial power savings in the same price bracket is indeed an impressive feat.

Substantial power savings, but certainly not the same price bracket. It is a $149 card so most reviews don't pit it against the much cheaper $119 R7 260X. In fact newegg right now sells an XFX OC edition of 260X for $119 and a Sapphire for $114 after rebate. Let's not mention that the Maxwell card gets trounced even by the cheaper 260X at many OpenCL tests - and reduced FP64 to 1/32 (vs the previous gen 1/24), so compute is also out. You have to pay dearly for the efficiency, nVidia as usual demands a price premium. Basically thank god for AMD being able to keep up, otherwise nVidia would be selling their cards 2X and 3X the price!

Comment: Re:Wow.... (Score 1) 218

Are you serious? He is requesting at the same time to be paid (quite highly actually - no it is not a good deal) for his photos AND be put down as a sponsor AND have his name printed on them. You can't ask for all of that - you give something to be a sponsor, you don't take, and in general asking for a big sum for photos usually means allowing no watermarks etc. And IN ADDITION he wants to be their official international photographer for life! But of course his father is a "cosmetic surgeon" and told him he can spend money and lawyer up, so he thought a little ridiculous extortion is fine too...

Comment: Eh, before going all gung-ho... (Score 1) 218

The kid seems like a little shit to me. When he found out they were using the pictures he send an extortionist email. He wrote that his father "a cosmetic surgeon", advised him to retain a lawyer and sue in federal court. But he said, magnanimously, instead he is: "requesting compensation as follows: $100,000.00 US deposited into my business bank account, additionally to be named the Official Photography Sponsor of The Color Run (Internationally) for the remainder of its existence, my Logo to be added in sponsors section next to Chevy on the bottom of your web pages. My name to read at the bottom of any photo's used in legible print from the next print run forward as, Photogrph by Max Jackson." "if no efforts are made within 15 days, to contact me I will be forced to take further action." This is not some poor kid here that they take away his livelihood. Yes, Color Run was in the wrong, but I can understand how they would get litigious after this!
