Or would that just be construed as an "enhanced shopping experience"? As a 23 (yep) year customer of Amazon, I have finally got seriously pissed with them. In the name of some kind of "helping you" convenience, (or at least, that is my notion of why they might be doing this), they will now only display on Amazon.com to us Canadians what can only be shipped here to Canada. If there is something that doesn't, then us Canadians won't see it, nor will we be told about it at any future date. Well done Amazon; in the name of "helping" (or convenience, or other such feint) you have censored what we can see that might be available. Now understand, previously, if there was anything that could not be shipped north of the border, there was a message displayed on the page for the item. So it was never a mystery game (unlike Newegg, read on) as to whether an item was available in Canada or not. But at least one would learn of an item's existence from Amazon.com.
Until now, Amazon.com served as an effective search engine as to what was out there in the retail sphere, such that one could further pursue an item should it not be on Amazon.ca. And believe me, Amazon.ca is a lame shadow of its US parent. Nearly every week I would look for something, and compare the two Amazons to validate the true unavailabilty and cost differential of an item. (About 90% of the time we get screwed in Canada for far more than the outrageous exchange rate).
And so as of this date, the Great Disintermediator has now become the Great Nationalistic Marketing Delimiter (read, Censor). Just to think in the early days of Amazon (any country) that Bezos was playing up (chirping on even) the need to break down marketing borders; say, if something was available in the UK first, then US customers could immediately procure that item, often a book, considerably ahead of time. (And too, they might of learned what was in the UK edition that wasn't in the US edition, besides the minor language differences). For now, or at least until they withdraw the notice, we get this lame-assed message:
We ship internationallyHow lame is that? Am I supposed to keep changing my country designation, (and language setting) even if they can detect where I really am, in order to find out if an item is available elsewhere? Soon, they won't supply this message and then us Canadians (and other countries) will be deluded into thinking that what is on Amazon.ca (a significant smaller subset, as mentioned above), is all that there is. In mid-2018 they pulled this shit in Australia, blocking orders from Amazon.com to Australia, where the same huge disparity in product availability exists, and I figured it was going to be the future Amazon world way. I was right. Maybe Bezos' divorce settlement, purported to be a world record by three orders of magnitude (but not yet public), is is going to be subsidized as compensation for this outrageous curtailment of informational freedom. If not, then who is pulling Bezos' chain, the richest man in the world at $150 Billion? In the least, I hope that Amazon won't continue to flog itself as a search engine, the height of censorial hubris, though I wouldn't put it past Bezos' crew.
We're showing you items that ship to Pxxxxx ...[Canada only actually -insert by author]. To see items that ship to a different country, change your delivery address.
Additional language settings are available.
And Newegg the smaller online retailer, bent over early in 2018, and supplied the template for this supine online market limitation retailing. They have had Newegg.ca for a long time, but if the item wasn't there, but was on Newegg.com, one could still order it and have it delivered into Canada (paying extra shipping, border crossing ransom, duty and taxes of course). Then in 2018 they began applying rules to the order after the shopping decisions were made. If the item wasn't available in Canada and was ordered from Newegg.com, why, it would just immediately disappear from the order! Thanks a lot you censorial dupes, and it will be the last time I order anything from Newegg.
I am now disgusted with humanity more than ever. You would think if you were the richest man in the world you could call all the shots, but it ain't so. (Or, maybe there is a substantive alternate reason, but I don't see one as I write this).
01-22-2019
With the counter top improvements I made to the place, it caused my rack server, which contained all my electronics (player, PC, amplifier) to be removed for the fist time in at least four years. the PC and Oppo are on the floor, and the amplifier above them on the counter top. And it was moved gently and all, but now the assholes have decided to use this as an excuse to cause the video to drop out sporadically. That is, Youtube, Netflix and any continual type of source. And now even as I write this blog. Needless to say I was mightily infuriated as there are just so many things going wrong of late, that until the insane perps leave this place and my life, they get the blame.
Besides, they have had an ongoing, if not all consuming, interest in disrupting visual flow. From placing Fuckwits on the bus to block my view, repeatedly, and on slow days in slow directions, it has been nothing but a fucking nightmare. So now, they have started a new piece of fuckery, and that is dropping the signal on my display screen. There is absolutely no conventional reason for this whatsoever, as I have disconnected and reconnected this equipment many times, and now, "for some reason", it is used as an excuse to disrupt video display.
I pulled the rack out today and reconnected everything so the rack can be cut down to fit underneath the new counter top. Before, it stood at a full 40" high along the tables against the wall, but is now too high for the counter top, so I pulled everything out so it can be taken to the welding shop. Sure, the components got moved, but nothing was mishandled or dropped, but now the assholes have used this as an excuse to fuck the shit out of my video display.
I went shopping at the big box hardware store for white caulking with the stocking/stalking assistant arriving on my ass with a case of caulking, and also doing her back and forths with more cases of caulking. Then on the opposite shelves and looking for the white filler wax on the opposite shelves, and getting dithered as to seeing what I was there for, why a, white shirted large dude comes belting around the corner just as I discover the location of the white filler wax. High excitement in Perpville; finding (another) white substance while he color matches it with his shirt. (And with it being cold out, why didn't he have a jacket on?).
After doing the checkout experience (always a big deal as the perps so love to stalk my ass when engaging in a financial transaction), and now in the parking lot, why, a dude at his vehicle two stalls from mine, is putting on (go figure) his painting whites at his driver's side. Another set up, as these Fuckwits in white just keep "erupting". As my vehicle was parked on his passenger side, why, this white suited Fuckwit walks around his vehicle so he can now be seen from my driving seat. Two mysterious events by this white dressed Fuckwit while getting in my vehicle with two white products in hand (caulking and filler wax) and green painter's masking tape, preceded by a white shirted Fuckwit in the aisle. Now closing in on 18 years of this insane and perverse choreography.
01-23,24-2019
Snowed today, and it stayed. On with my care-taking duties while my landlords are away in Mexico for 8 weeks. That is, clearing the sidewalk, pathways, vehicles and on the inside, the mail and general checking about.
I always wondered why the anti-oil pipeline activists were so nutzo and utterly irrational, and now I know. The nutzos would include the Vancouver mayor (Gregor Robertson) and his ideological pal, British Columbia's Premier Hourigan. (Whom I call Hooligan). The Rockefellers and other large US interests are funding the so-called green activists want to keep Alberta oil in the ground, and presumably, to slow down economic development. So this utter shit-show over the past 10 years over pipelines, has been orchestrated by billionaire funded saboteurs with reaches to the highest levels in the land. Read Vivian Krause' work, (a list of news articles, and her blog site). And too, sticking it to that enviro-poseur, Suzuki, (and his profane response to a legitimate challenge) the darling of the limousine liberal left, not to mention of our supposed objective taxpayer funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (And scooping an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta after flouting their avowed standards of maintaining scientific integrity). Fair questions indeed, and can we have some answers from our elected officials that stand up to scrutiny?
So..., this for me invokes a severely critical look at all these environmentalists and what their real objectives are. And too, the long entrenched ones like Suzuki, and why is he feeding at the trough of billionaires? I would call Vivian Krause' work and the concomitant non-response of the elected officials and other supposed environmentalists a total game changer for me. Not quite to the level of being abused and harassed as a nonconsensual human experimentee all one's life, but certainly casting a whole new and critical perspective on the resource activists in this here region. I don't think I will ever take environmentalists at their word any more, nor the aligned preachings of the elected officials singing off the same song sheet.
01-27-2019
Another and intensified round of exasperation with Windows and MS, and computer audio, as I have been for the past 10 years. I was cleaning up some music files, and clicked on one and it gave me the option of playing it, so I selected it as I hadn't remembered what it was. What a fucking mistake that was, even if it was MS supplied software called "Groove". More like "the abyss that missed". This fucking MS software has locked up the audio and my J River won't play, nor Youtube or anything off this PC. Well done Microsoft; you give me an audio player I didn't want, and didn't know that I had (by not telling me), and then screw me with a "handy" command to play a music file, and then crash my audio on the whole PC (for the session and for good) for which you assholes supply the operating system.
I had this system tweaked and tuned and working flawlessly for the past two years, playing everything through my Oppo and its DAC, and using J River to play stored audio files, all playing through the same stereo system. (No mean feat either, as that was worth a week of exasperation in itself). Now it is fucked up owing to one single use of an audio player from the outfit that makes the operating system. I have looked up what might the problem be, and will do some more troving, but I am so fed up with MS and their utter shit software that clobbers the one thing that was working great, in spite of them. Why did you do this? Did you ever think I would use another MS product for playing audio? NEVER, owing to past MS stunts, like attempting to lock me into YOUR proprietary audio formats, which I never, ever, found acceptable. (Same for you Apple). So stick with your proprietary formats and leave FLAC files alone. Furthermore, if you see that someone has invested some money in obtaining and using a far better audio player, don't secretly load Groove or whatever next audio clobbering product you dream up.
This Groove thing might be the first product that MS has put out there to play non-proprietary audio files, such as the FLAC codec, which I use. After an absurd 15 year long pissing match between MS and Apple over their proprietary audio file formats, at least the former had the sense to get with it, and realize that no one wants their music files to be locked in with their OS vendor. But, MS forgot to learn the basic lesson from Apple; make your software work seamlessly, never a concern for them formerly. And for MS; if I submit a bill for combing the Internet to find a solution, and fix it, at least two hours I reckon, will you pay it? One might wonder where the music industry is in all this, but hey, Apple rumbled them years ago with Itunes.
And for the audiophile community, the NAS thing doesn't cut it either. A NAS vendor that cuts support of FLAC files within months of me purchasing the hardware, and the NAS software that cannot update itself through the firewall, and the NAS box firing off and doing backups of things that I didn't want, or just plain firing off and I don't know what it is doing as it wasn't scheduled.
I cannot believe the audio systems manufacturers, save a few (noted below), can be so utterly boneheaded as to think potential customers want to mess with two computers to play music, the PC and the NAS on the network. And then to add a third computer, a mobile phone, to control their audio devices, typically "streamers" (but in fact are wildly inconsistent in their nomenclature as to just what that is), is the height of techno-absurdity. What were those audio gear designers thinking; "lets have more device dependencies (from other hardware and software vendors) because we are so lazy as to not want to make a real audio server, and better yet, have an ever mutable interface in the form of a mobile phone app to mess with the heads for our customers". Something like that.
There has to be someone yanking their collective chain such that nearly all the audio gear manufacturers "somehow" haven't got on board with audio servers. And to get that term correctly understood, it would have on board (in-box if you prefer) storage for audio files and must have an interface with it to control the device. (And you can add mobile apps, wifi, network access and all that too if you must). Kind of like a CD player, ya know, just that the physical medium is a file storage device which could be put on removable trays, kinda like real servers for the past 30 years. Apart from the serious glam high end audio gear (over $3kUSD), only Nativ (great looking interface), Cocktail (removable drive trays are a great feature, as well as being the most versatile gear out there), and almost unbelievably, Sony and the HAP-ES box (and HAP S1Es) are the only ones that truly get it. Thinking that plugging in a NAS as the music source, or a mobile phone app as a credible interface is design indolence. And to then supply "streamers", basically a web connected computer that preferentially accesses audio sources ("radio" or streaming services) is just plain waving the middle finger at those who have music collections and want to listen to them. There is nothing like frustrating one's customers, especially for prolonged durations, to earn everlasting disdain and contempt. Just ask the the Windows crowd.
Two rants done (above); the first and more immediate fuckery precipitating the second. Now, onto getting the right audio equipment and getting off Windows. My New Year's resolution is now in focus and articulated.
Not a good week for keeping confidence in technology or human behavior, but hey, I had my belief system turned upside down when this relentless abuse-athon began 04-2002. This week's disillusions are merely an exposition of a(nother) facet of The Powers That Be, TPTB.
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