Example: Getting caught offering different prices to new customers vs repeat customers in the past in a “test”

They seem to be doing something like it again today:

In the screenshot the left window is logged in to my account, the right is a private browser (no naughty cookies for Amazon to use to identify me), copy/pasted the URL to both sides to ensure that I’m looking at identical items on both sides.

Note the Kindle price varies from $7.99 to $6.39.

UPDATE: Amazon never did respond. Shame.

I’d still like to know what iTunes is doing with over 640MB of memory, 20% of a quad core 2.4GHz CPU (yes, that’s almost 2GHz devoted entirely to iTunes) since it’s too busy to redraw the screen properly.

I have a ton of drives spread across my various servers and computers and have more or less standarized on Seagate drives, mainly due to the fact that they’re reasonably priced, perform better then the competition (at least when I’ve tested) and have the best warranty in their class.

Warranties are always up in the air though, they’re only as worthwhile as the company backing the warranty request. I finally had a drive reporting errors, my first in many moons, so I contacted Seagate for warranty.

Starting the process was simple, I used Google to look for Seagate Warranty, supplied the model and serial number, my contact information, put the drive in a box and shipped it off.

Here we are about two weeks later and I have a refurbished drive. According to S.M.A.R.T. the drive is brand new, although it’s not impossible for Seagate to reset the hours-of-operation counter before shipping the drive out.

So thanks Seagate for standing by your products! I’m ordering two more drives and you can get that they too will be Seagate.

I am currently running an entire virtual instance of Windows Vista (you know, that OS you keep poking holes at in your commercials) and in that instance I am running three different webbrowsers and a mail *server*.

Guess what is using more memory, iTunes or Vista? Now keep in mind one is an operating system and the other is an overgrown music player which Apple has bundled (hmm, wasn’t Apple among those crying about Microsoft’s bundling a couple years ago) with some of their hardware.

Please learn to write more compact code, and for the sake of all that is holy, learn how to use multiple threads so the entire iTunes GUI can be snappy and responsive while it takes iTunes 99% of a 2.4GHz core for over 30 seconds just to connect to an iPhone, will ya?

One shelter for the homeless in Calgary – the Mustard Seed – estimates that up to 60 per cent of its residents are working. In March 2007, the Calgary Drop-In Centre, Canada’s largest shelter, reported that just over 40 per cent of its residents worked more than 32 hours a week. The Calgary food bank reports that the majority of its clients are working poor.

Okay, lets do some math here. First, lets assume that “more then 32 hours a week” means “32 hours a week”. Second, with Tim Horton’s hiring for $12/hour, and no less then a dozen signs in the NE industrial park hiring at $15/hour and up, lets assume everyone is making $13/hour.

(For those job hunting, get on buses 72, 73, or 32. On bus 72/73, keep your eyes open between Deerfoot and 36th St. On 32, on 12th street and 27th Ave. If you can’t find the signs, either the positions were filled in the last 5 hours, or you’re too stupid to work said jobs anyway)

So, $13/hour*32hours is $416/week. $416/week is $21,705/year, or assuming a standard 26-cheque year, that’s $1664/month, with two additional cheques.

$1664.00 isn’t a lot in this town you say? Well, maybe not. Lets see. First, comes income tax. As it turns out, you’re paying 14% combined income tax, CPP and EI. This leaves you with $1331.20 each month.

Next is rent. How about a nice three bedroom townhouse?

$1395/month.
$16/month mandatory property insurance (okay, you can probably do better, I’m paying about that myself, but I have a few optional add-ons)
$350/month power+water+sewer through Easymax.
$75.90/month What the heck, lets even throw in internet, basic cable and telephone, all through Shaw.ca

So we’re up to $1395+$16+$350+$75.90, or $1836.90/month. Now remember, this is a three bedroom, lets assume you have a roommate, so $1836.90/2 is $918.45/month each.

So, income is $1331.20/month, rent and utilities are $918.45/month, a bit of quick math and we have $412.75/month. Not a lot, but certainly enough for a $20/month prepaid mobile phone, $75/month bus pass and some food.

Not enough left over? Well, add a third roommate. Why pay $918.45/month when you could pay a lot less, how does $612.30/month sound? Or, with $1331.20/month and three roommates, that’s $718.90/month left over. Again, take off $75 for a bus pass, splurge and get the $30 phone plan, still have $613.90 to cover food.

Oh, and all of this assumes you have no real skills. Timmy’s will teach you what you need, most of the jobs advertised on signs in the NE industrial park are call center or manual labour.

You might not be livin large, but seriously, want to live indoors? Or just live homeless.

You know the ones, where you get a “I am Mrs Rekha D’Cunha from Kuwait. I am married to Mr.Sylvester D’Cunha who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for eleven years before he died in the year 2002.” and ends with an offer of a large sum of money if you’re willing to help them move an even larger sum of money?

Check this out, it’s absolutely brilliant!

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

So the question is, how exactly is this supposed to help? Reducing prices doesn’t help reduce consumption, and according to my memory of supply-and-demand 101, with a fixed supply, the only way to reduce costs is to REDUCE consumption, not increase it.

Oh well, stupid is as stupid does.

If you purchased in the United States between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008 from a retail store in the United States (including Creative’s and others’ on-line retail stores) a new Creative brand hard disc drive MP3 player (“Creative HDD MP3 Player”),

Well, that’s me. Read on…

In the suit, plaintiffs allege that in the sale and marketing of its hard disc drive MP3 players Creative stated that purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received

Hard drive manufacturers do that all the time.

and misrepresented the number of songs and number of hours of music the players could hold

Hey now! If you like compressing your music to sound like it came through a 1930s era transistor radio then you’ll easily obtain the quoted capacity.

Creative has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiffs’ claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation. The Court has not made a decision on the merits.

And yet, here they go compensating us. Justice at work.

if you submit a valid claim… a discount certificate good for 20% off the price of any single item purchased at www.us.creative.com.

20% off — Fantastic. So I go price out a nice 2GB Zen (a sweet MP3 player), and with shipping it’s only $19 over the cost of just buying it in a local store. Yay.

I believe that’s called justice!

(In Creative’s defense, despite the fact that I do agree they acted dishonestly, they did follow industry practice — Oh, and they’re not first the hard drive retailer to settle either)

If you happen to fall into this class, go to www.creativehddmp3settlement.com for info, if you grab a more expensive unit and qualify for free shipping, you might actually come out ahead on this one.

The Writers Guild of America moved swiftly Sunday toward a resolution of its three-month-old strike, with guild leaders deciding to recommend a tentative contract to members and ask them to vote on a quick end to the walkout.

Sweet!

It doesn’t appear that they addressed any of the deficiencies that existed in the one and only beta which was released many months ago (like still no support for Quick Install… removed support for category coloring in calendar,etc.) — In fact, they removed support for a few devices! Why even run a beta?

For me, this is the last straw.  Well, actually a combination of this, plus iTunes64.  Why?  (And how is that related?)

Well I’m glad you asked.  With Apple having released iPod Touch drivers for Vista x64, my Treo is now my *only* device that doesn’t have 100% support for Vista x64.  (Well okay, in the vein of being completely honest, my printer/scanner/copier doesn’t have 100% support, I can’t make the “Scan” button on the scanner launch my scanner app in x64 mode, it works in x86 mode.  This is actually a limitation of the scanner software though, the drivers themselves support the scanner button — If I manually launch the app, it works great.  Since I didn’t notice this omission for over three months, I can’t say I’m broken up over it)

I’ve been a loyal Palm user since the 90s, and have owned more devices I can count (IIIe, IIIxe, m505, Zire71, TE2, T|X, Treo 650, Treo 680 all come to mind, but I know I am missing a couple in the middle somewhere), and having been progressively more disappointed with each device, I have been near the edge of moving on for a while.

I enjoy PalmOS, but it’s just not powerful enough to keep up with today’s applications, especially combined with the unavoidable brokenness of NVFS.

So, with that in mind, I am ordering a new HTC 8925 (aka TyTN II, aka AT&T Tilt).  Windows Mobile 6, built-in GPS, slide-out keyboard, 2.8-inch touchscreen, Wifi, 3-megapixel camera, 3G HSDPA, support for 32GB SDHC cards, stereo bluetooth headphone support, all in a form-factor that rings in smaller then the Treo 680 (okay, okay, only by a couple millimeters, but still, that’s an impressive list of features that Palm doesn’t even dream about)

I look forward to a phone with reasonable voice quality — My Treo 680 is so bad that I actually put it on a data-only plan and carry a real cell phone for voice, and use the Treo only for data.

I look forward to being able to answer the phone without a crash — Something neither my Treo 650 nor 680 could do 100% of the time.

I look forward to being able to survive a full day of standby with my email client running the background without needing to recharge mid-day.

I look forward to being able to check my email in a hotel lobby via wifi, rather then paying my carrier per-KB roaming charges that reflect a level of greed that would make the Enron folks blush.

I look forward to having more then 15 categories.  Seriously Palm, Y2K was eight years ago, get with the times.

I look forward to one again having more then 1-bar of signal in my basement.  Even my 2004 Razr has enough signal to make and receive calls, and transmit data — I have reliable data on my LifeDrive using Bluetooth through my Razr, but the Treo 680 doesn’t even notice inbound calls most of the time, and don’t even get me started about checking an email.

As I compare the specs against what is more or less the top of the line for Palm’s GSM line (Treo 680), were I Palm, I’d be embarrassed by the 2005-like feature set.

I’ve stayed loyal to Palm thing long due to some bad WM experiences in the 2001-2002 era, my existing collection of applications, and the fact that I know and understand PalmOS’ internals well enough to be able to fix nearly any software issue I bump into.  Once upon a time I was on a constant hunt for new Palm apps, updates to my apps, new tips and tricks — I rarely went more then a week without finding something.  It’s been months since any application I use released anything other then a minor bug fix, and several of my can’t-live-without-them apps have been abandoned completely or simply killed by Palm (KeySuite, Mapopolis, Chatteremail, Blazer)

I am still apprehensive as despite having done a fair amount of reading, I am still effectively going by marketing rather then real life experience.  Palm’s latest devices look great on paper too, so we’ll see.  I am a little concerned about losing some functionality, from what I have heard there isn’t a single functional IMAP mail client on WM6, but there are a couple on the horizon, and this area is an area that I am personally and professionally invested.

So, fingers crossed… Ordering on eBay in a little over 12 hours (no local carrier carries the device I want, nor do I want to renew my contract)

UPDATE (2008/01/12): Palm’s official blog announcement post…

In my parents’ case, at least one is standing in line at Walmart. Yay. Not nearly as busy as it might have been earlier today, but still busy — To Walmart’s credit, they’ve managed to borrow enough people from the seventh circle of hell to keep the checkouts open (sixth circle of hell, as it turns out)

Traditionally Walmart was only open 24 hours a day around Christmas, but it sounds like some locations are going 24/7 permanently… I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, or just a sign of a lot of damned people getting jobs at Walmart these days.