What's worse is they withheld an android app they had on their android based kindle because they wanted people to buy kindles. When it didn't work, and people kept complaining, after some years, they finally released an android app. They've always made it difficult because they wanted people to buy their hardware, too. So this move is not surprising, but out of complete honesty here, I bought a FireTV because I wanted a separate device (not tied to a tablet or a disc player) that could do both Netflix and Prime.
Well... the devices should just run apps, and there's a prime video app (at least for phones/tablets). It was a long time coming - for a long time, you couldn't watch on any portable devices that were blessed by Amazon - you needed a kindle tablet at the time, despite the fact that the app would have probably run on any android device. They wanted people to buy kindles. Period. I would hope they could make an arrangement that if the other devices had Prime support that then Amazon would allow them to be sold again, but I'm not holding my breath. I fear it will be like with the tablet, where when withholding the app from general use didn't cause people to come running to buy kindles, they finally released an app that would work on most android devices.
Despite their Emmy wins on their own content, Prime isn't compelling enough for video - the free stuff just isn't all that. Prime video is icing on the prime subscription cake - people don't get it for the video, they get it for the free 2-day shipping.
Maybe. Frankly, one of the reasons I didn't get a chromecast is because I couldn't watch Amazon prime video with it (I don't know about now, but at the time). I don't even use prime video much at all - the free stuff is mostly crap, but if I was going to get something, I wanted something that I could use for any service I had.
I will definitely keep prime. The Amazon prime package (mainly free two-day shipping) is worth it on it's own for how much I order. Prime video is just some icing on the cake, but if I want to watch netflix or something, I can do it whether Amazon wants me to or not.
"The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
If it's not a joke, if it falls short of being a joke, then he's admitting there is a possibility! Cool! I'll start packing!
Well, I'm wondering what do you (and everybody else) expect? Remember when cruise control came out? People are idiots. There's no such thing as common sense anymore, it's quite uncommon, and as someone who drives a LOT more than average (20k miles/year as opposed to the supposed "average" 12k), no matter what time of day (rush hour or wee hours of the morning), people are idiots.
Even when people say they are on the same page, you get everybody doing everything differently. If everyone who agreed you should always signal actually always signaled, or that you shouldn't tailgate actually didn't tailgate, you should get in your exit lane a reasonable distance before the exit, you shouldn't enter an intersection you can't clear (causing gridlock)... if everyone who said those things actually did those things themselves, driving wouldn't be such a nightmare.
You will NEVER get everyone on the same page, and it only takes one guy in 500 on a typical morning commute in any reasonably large city to royally screw up traffic.
The ONLY way automobile traffic improves is with computers - all programmed the same way - to do the driving for you, completely and entirely. Once you give control back to a human, they will instantly screw it up for everyone else. Sadly. My faith in humankind working together for something as simple as getting around has been completely destroyed by 2 decades of commuting in Atlanta traffic, although I've done my fair share of driving elsewhere, too. People in every large city think they have the worst drivers... and that's sad, because if you live long enough in any other city, you realize they're everywhere - you can't get away from them, and it will sadly never get better until the control is out of our hands.
Well, I think that's still important - you CAN drive a manual transmission, I think that in itself makes you more aware of the car itself, and you might even be likely paying attention to when your auto shifts to make a better ride, just like if you know how to do at least basic maintenance then you will probably abuse your car less while driving. Probably.
I like cruise control, too, even under normal commuting, because I can pay attention to other things on the road while not worrying about driving an inconsistent speed. Of course, I'm constantly overriding it to pass by people or when traffic starts to get thicker. But I still remember all the stories about cruise control when it started becoming common - like how people would set it and then read a newspaper or something... exactly what the article is talking about.
Every advantage you try to give people is quickly diminished to it's lowest possible returns by idiot drivers, like people who don't wear seat belts (and drive more aggressively) because of modern safety features, like ABS and SRS. You can't win.
I've actually given a lot of thought to it, and because you'll NEVER be able to get everybody on the same page when it comes to driving - even when it's things pretty much everybody agrees on, like that you should always signal despite the nearly half (by my observation) who don't signal consistently (if at all). The ONLY solution is fully automated driving.
Ha... guy at work was showing off his smart watch - all the different dials he could put to show what time it was. Nothing useful, but the flash could run around the dial instead of a second hand. Bravo.
I agree with loser pays, but I also think it ought to be capped, like the cost of ONE lawyer and ONE legal assistant at an industry average cost per hour, plus maybe some reasonable miscellaneous expenses. I do think that, otherwise, large corporations (or the wealthy) would just hire 100 lawyers at top rates to scare away potential lawsuits.
I learned, at age 47, I'd been tying my shoelaces wrong, so I'm amazed at what we can find out in mundane things like studying knots.
In case anyone cares - I learned if the starter knot goes left over right, the finishing part needs to go right over left. If you do left over right again, it's not strong and comes untied. As soon as I learned this and switched, I never had a shoelace come undone.
I'm sorry, I should have continued - yes, "ugghh..." was my initial reaction, I did change it. Been using Linux since the early 90's, and I know a lot of old-timers don't like Ubuntu, but Ubuntu makes it easy - I want to program, not tweak the system to death, but at least there's some fairly easy choices.
That's what I was thinking... they gave me a Mac Mini at work about 4 years ago. I gave it a real try - several months, but couldn't get over the UI, and couldn't understand why people claimed to like it so much. So I powered it down and worked on my old Linux box. Then Ubuntu switched to Unity, and I was like "this again? I went back to Linux to get AWAY from this."
I think anyone can get accustomed to just about any UI, and I think we're mostly hung up on how things worked before, but unless those new "paradigms" actually prove advantageous to work, then it's not just a fear of something new or disliking a learning curve - why should I learn something new when it gains me nothing?
Why, no, the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Thank you so much for setting me straight.
What they learned was I got a cheap phone and bought myself other stuff for that Christmas, and ALL they got were phones - most of which ended up not working as good as mine. If it makes you feel better, this coming Christmas my daughter already asked to get a cheaper phone so she could get something else. Life's little lessons are often learned better from experience than lecturing from a parent.
So, being on a budget, and buying phones for the whole family (wife + 2 teenage kids), a couple of years ago I got us all new phones. The wife and kids needed the closest thing to a status symbol we could afford, so they got Samsung S3's; I don't care and saved like $100 getting the ZTE 9810. My screen is bigger, the battery lasts longer, and everything works fine on it. The only difference was memory (8GB vs 16), which is a problem because I hardly have anything installed and run out of memory really easily (external card helps, but doesn't fix the problem). But on the whole I like my phone just as much as they like their's because I don't care about brand names.
The S3's all have charging problems, too. The mini USB connectors just have a problem making a good connection.
I had to replace one recently - despite plans to get everyone new phones this Christmas, so I opted for one of the cheapest I could get. My wife, the biggest complainer in the bunch, got a $50 phone as a temporary replacement, and isn't complaining.
"While many of these movies are popular, they are also widely available on cable and other subscription platforms at the same time as they are on Netflix and subject to the same drawn out licensing periods."
The reason we can be cord cutters is because we get netflix, so you're suggesting I go back to doing both? %#!# you. #@# you very much.
Why? Why is it "even greater?" You really think getting people living in the middle of nowhere is one of the best places the government can spend our money? I don't.
Do you really want there to only be one lifestyle available in the country? Don't you want there to be infrastructure available in remote regions of the nation so that you can enjoy it if you should have to go there?
Actually, no, not really - people like me go out to the country to get away from it, not continue to be burdened by it. But the question is why is it a greater priority than other things? It's probably a great priority to you.
Unless it's a serious land yacht with cookie-cutter tires, you'd be getting absolutely robbed if all the road maintenance came from fuel taxes.
It's not - and that's part of the point (I'm not just being "greedy"). If you want to change the idea (especially with the advent of electric vehicles), it should be a factor of vehicle weight times miles. Of course, that doesn't count payload or how many miles a trailer might have been pulled - that's why I kept it as gas tax, because (before electrics) it was the easiest means to cover the cost. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you get overbearing government rules, a whole novel about how the tax structure works just for vehicles.
Ok; point taken. Get back to me when you can prove that two wrongs make a right, and that people somehow have the right to IP they didn't pay for, what with video games being so essential and all.
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What's worse is they withheld an android app they had on their android based kindle because they wanted people to buy kindles. When it didn't work, and people kept complaining, after some years, they finally released an android app. They've always made it difficult because they wanted people to buy their hardware, too. So this move is not surprising, but out of complete honesty here, I bought a FireTV because I wanted a separate device (not tied to a tablet or a disc player) that could do both Netflix and Prime.
Well... the devices should just run apps, and there's a prime video app (at least for phones/tablets). It was a long time coming - for a long time, you couldn't watch on any portable devices that were blessed by Amazon - you needed a kindle tablet at the time, despite the fact that the app would have probably run on any android device. They wanted people to buy kindles. Period. I would hope they could make an arrangement that if the other devices had Prime support that then Amazon would allow them to be sold again, but I'm not holding my breath. I fear it will be like with the tablet, where when withholding the app from general use didn't cause people to come running to buy kindles, they finally released an app that would work on most android devices.
Despite their Emmy wins on their own content, Prime isn't compelling enough for video - the free stuff just isn't all that. Prime video is icing on the prime subscription cake - people don't get it for the video, they get it for the free 2-day shipping.
Maybe. Frankly, one of the reasons I didn't get a chromecast is because I couldn't watch Amazon prime video with it (I don't know about now, but at the time). I don't even use prime video much at all - the free stuff is mostly crap, but if I was going to get something, I wanted something that I could use for any service I had.
I will definitely keep prime. The Amazon prime package (mainly free two-day shipping) is worth it on it's own for how much I order. Prime video is just some icing on the cake, but if I want to watch netflix or something, I can do it whether Amazon wants me to or not.
True - but still worth it for the vast majority of things, especially with free two day shipping.
Agreed.... if someone wants to buy something, they will go where it's convenient to buy it. It's just that simple.
I didn't see where he said we "shouldn't" go, just that it's a fantasy to think it'll be any time soon.
"The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
If it's not a joke, if it falls short of being a joke, then he's admitting there is a possibility! Cool! I'll start packing!
Well, I'm wondering what do you (and everybody else) expect? Remember when cruise control came out? People are idiots. There's no such thing as common sense anymore, it's quite uncommon, and as someone who drives a LOT more than average (20k miles/year as opposed to the supposed "average" 12k), no matter what time of day (rush hour or wee hours of the morning), people are idiots.
Even when people say they are on the same page, you get everybody doing everything differently. If everyone who agreed you should always signal actually always signaled, or that you shouldn't tailgate actually didn't tailgate, you should get in your exit lane a reasonable distance before the exit, you shouldn't enter an intersection you can't clear (causing gridlock)... if everyone who said those things actually did those things themselves, driving wouldn't be such a nightmare.
You will NEVER get everyone on the same page, and it only takes one guy in 500 on a typical morning commute in any reasonably large city to royally screw up traffic.
The ONLY way automobile traffic improves is with computers - all programmed the same way - to do the driving for you, completely and entirely. Once you give control back to a human, they will instantly screw it up for everyone else. Sadly. My faith in humankind working together for something as simple as getting around has been completely destroyed by 2 decades of commuting in Atlanta traffic, although I've done my fair share of driving elsewhere, too. People in every large city think they have the worst drivers... and that's sad, because if you live long enough in any other city, you realize they're everywhere - you can't get away from them, and it will sadly never get better until the control is out of our hands.
And here's looking forward to the WALL-E future.
Well, I think that's still important - you CAN drive a manual transmission, I think that in itself makes you more aware of the car itself, and you might even be likely paying attention to when your auto shifts to make a better ride, just like if you know how to do at least basic maintenance then you will probably abuse your car less while driving. Probably.
I like cruise control, too, even under normal commuting, because I can pay attention to other things on the road while not worrying about driving an inconsistent speed. Of course, I'm constantly overriding it to pass by people or when traffic starts to get thicker. But I still remember all the stories about cruise control when it started becoming common - like how people would set it and then read a newspaper or something... exactly what the article is talking about.
Every advantage you try to give people is quickly diminished to it's lowest possible returns by idiot drivers, like people who don't wear seat belts (and drive more aggressively) because of modern safety features, like ABS and SRS. You can't win.
I've actually given a lot of thought to it, and because you'll NEVER be able to get everybody on the same page when it comes to driving - even when it's things pretty much everybody agrees on, like that you should always signal despite the nearly half (by my observation) who don't signal consistently (if at all). The ONLY solution is fully automated driving.
Ha... guy at work was showing off his smart watch - all the different dials he could put to show what time it was. Nothing useful, but the flash could run around the dial instead of a second hand. Bravo.
I agree with loser pays, but I also think it ought to be capped, like the cost of ONE lawyer and ONE legal assistant at an industry average cost per hour, plus maybe some reasonable miscellaneous expenses. I do think that, otherwise, large corporations (or the wealthy) would just hire 100 lawyers at top rates to scare away potential lawsuits.
No, he's right - I'm very cynical of the federal government, but the problem isn't me, it's that he feigns ignorance over how that could possibly be.
I learned, at age 47, I'd been tying my shoelaces wrong, so I'm amazed at what we can find out in mundane things like studying knots.
In case anyone cares - I learned if the starter knot goes left over right, the finishing part needs to go right over left. If you do left over right again, it's not strong and comes untied. As soon as I learned this and switched, I never had a shoelace come undone.
True; what it really seems like is a marginally better Amazon Fire TV.
I'm sorry, I should have continued - yes, "ugghh..." was my initial reaction, I did change it. Been using Linux since the early 90's, and I know a lot of old-timers don't like Ubuntu, but Ubuntu makes it easy - I want to program, not tweak the system to death, but at least there's some fairly easy choices.
That's what I was thinking... they gave me a Mac Mini at work about 4 years ago. I gave it a real try - several months, but couldn't get over the UI, and couldn't understand why people claimed to like it so much. So I powered it down and worked on my old Linux box. Then Ubuntu switched to Unity, and I was like "this again? I went back to Linux to get AWAY from this."
I think anyone can get accustomed to just about any UI, and I think we're mostly hung up on how things worked before, but unless those new "paradigms" actually prove advantageous to work, then it's not just a fear of something new or disliking a learning curve - why should I learn something new when it gains me nothing?
That's a huge relief - my smartphone is apparently perfectly safe, no malware or anything, nobody trying to track me. Thank goodness for America!
Why, no, the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Thank you so much for setting me straight.
What they learned was I got a cheap phone and bought myself other stuff for that Christmas, and ALL they got were phones - most of which ended up not working as good as mine. If it makes you feel better, this coming Christmas my daughter already asked to get a cheaper phone so she could get something else. Life's little lessons are often learned better from experience than lecturing from a parent.
So, being on a budget, and buying phones for the whole family (wife + 2 teenage kids), a couple of years ago I got us all new phones. The wife and kids needed the closest thing to a status symbol we could afford, so they got Samsung S3's; I don't care and saved like $100 getting the ZTE 9810. My screen is bigger, the battery lasts longer, and everything works fine on it. The only difference was memory (8GB vs 16), which is a problem because I hardly have anything installed and run out of memory really easily (external card helps, but doesn't fix the problem). But on the whole I like my phone just as much as they like their's because I don't care about brand names.
The S3's all have charging problems, too. The mini USB connectors just have a problem making a good connection.
I had to replace one recently - despite plans to get everyone new phones this Christmas, so I opted for one of the cheapest I could get. My wife, the biggest complainer in the bunch, got a $50 phone as a temporary replacement, and isn't complaining.
So let's just turn off everything to make global warming go away.
"While many of these movies are popular, they are also widely available on cable and other subscription platforms at the same time as they are on Netflix and subject to the same drawn out licensing periods."
The reason we can be cord cutters is because we get netflix, so you're suggesting I go back to doing both? %#!# you. #@# you very much.
Why? Why is it "even greater?" You really think getting people living in the middle of nowhere is one of the best places the government can spend our money? I don't.
Do you really want there to only be one lifestyle available in the country? Don't you want there to be infrastructure available in remote regions of the nation so that you can enjoy it if you should have to go there?
Actually, no, not really - people like me go out to the country to get away from it, not continue to be burdened by it. But the question is why is it a greater priority than other things? It's probably a great priority to you.
Unless it's a serious land yacht with cookie-cutter tires, you'd be getting absolutely robbed if all the road maintenance came from fuel taxes.
It's not - and that's part of the point (I'm not just being "greedy"). If you want to change the idea (especially with the advent of electric vehicles), it should be a factor of vehicle weight times miles. Of course, that doesn't count payload or how many miles a trailer might have been pulled - that's why I kept it as gas tax, because (before electrics) it was the easiest means to cover the cost. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you get overbearing government rules, a whole novel about how the tax structure works just for vehicles.
Ok; point taken. Get back to me when you can prove that two wrongs make a right, and that people somehow have the right to IP they didn't pay for, what with video games being so essential and all.