Mokka mit Schlag

How to Use Multiple Credit Cards for a Single Amazon Purchase

2010-03-13T15:20:59Z

Amazon doesn’t let you apply multiple credit cards to one purchase. This can be a problem when buying a high ticket item whose cost exceeds your available limit on one card. Probably not a good idea in general, but this happened to me recently when I wanted to use an American express gift card. However Amazon does let you buy Amazon gift certificates with as many cards as you like in any denomination you like from $5 to $5000.

The trick is simple. Figure out what the total cost is and then buy gift certificates on your different cards, e-mail them to yourself, and use them to purchase the item. This is a little easier to organize if you leave a little slack for the final card. Then you don’t have to get it right down to the penny. It’s also easier if you’re able to use supersaver shipping and live in a state where Amazon doesn’t collect sales tax, so you don’t have to figure that into your calculation.

I was in probably the most complicated scenario. I had a American Express gift card that can’t be used to buy Amazon gift certificates (some American Express rule I think) and since Amazon applies the full value of the gift certificate before charging the card, I had to get the number right down to the penny. Furthermore I live in New York for which Amazon collects taxes, and there was a shipping charge. So I went all the way to final checkout page to get my total, but did not place the order. I went back to the home page and bought my gift certificates. When they arrived I checked out again and applied the gift certificates. (I actually could have done this with one gift certificate but I got the numbers wrong the first time and had to do it over.)

Final result: gift card balance zero, and one new Canon EF12 II extension tube, Sandisk Extreme Firewire Card Reader, and Sandisk 32GB CompactFlash extreme card. Who knows? If enough folks click on the Amazon ads below. that combined with the $0.98 I saved, will actually have paid for the time I spent getting this precisely right. Who said humans were rational consumers? :-)

NA49 Continues in Prospect Park

2010-03-07T18:36:04Z

This morning I refound the banded Canada Goose NA49 that I first saw in September and that’s been hanging out at least since January, 2009. I don’t see it often though so it may spend most of its time somewhere else outside the park.

This time I even got close enough to make out some of the leg band:

Ron Paul 2012

2010-03-07T16:35:11Z

I have come to the sad realization that Barack Obama is a massive failure. Ron Paul would’ve been a much better choice in 2008 and likely in 2012, even for a left-leaning libertarian like myself. I’m not saying that I would vote for any Republican over Barack Obama. Obama is at least marginally less repugnant than most of the Fox news endorsed yahoos like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Nor am I saying that I agree with Ron Paul on everything. I don’t. But there seems to be no reasonable Democratic candidate who will deliver on any of the issues on which I do disagree with Ron Paul. Given that fact, the rational choice, the lesser of two evils, is the Republican. It’s not hard to see why. Just consider what Obama has delivered and compare that to what Ron Paul would’ve delivered.

I’m basically a libertarian in the Robert Anton Wilson mode; i.e. someone who likes nature and doesn’t hate taxes or poor people. Welfare doesn’t bother me but sending airplanes halfway around the world to kill a bunch of poor villagers does. With that in mind, let’s consider the issues:

Healthcare: I want a reliable, single-payer system that ensures everyone has access to reasonable health care. On this issue Ron Paul would’ve delivered exactly what Barack Obama has: absolutely nothing.

The economy: Keynes described the state of the economy we’re in 70 years ago. Massive government intervention is called for. However, that intervention should focus on shoring up people’s incomes and support systems, not the bonuses of Wall Street bankers. Here Obama may have actually done a little bit better than Ron Paul would’ve done. However, he hasn’t done nearly enough. This minor improvement is hardly justification for the continuing torture state endorsed by Barack Obama.

The environment: freedom stops at the next person’s nose. Pollution doesn’t. Regulating emissions and protecting the environment is a proper function of government. We need much stronger environmental regulations and government enforcement thereof. And once again, Ron Paul would’ve accomplished exactly what Barack Obama has: absolutely nothing.

Foreign-policy: this is the area where Ron Paul really shines. Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He didn’t. There is at least a reasonable possibility that Ron Paul would’ve actually shut the torture prison down by now. Barack Obama promised to get us out of Iraq within a year. He didn’t, and there’s no exit date in sight. Ron Paul would have the troops out by now. Barack Obama promised to expand the war in Afghanistan and kill more people, and this is one promise he delivered on. Ron Paul would not have done that.

The Supreme Court: Barack Obama’s one choice so far for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, isn’t awful but neither is she great. Perhaps she’ll become another Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall, but I’m not betting on it. I suspect Ron Paul would have nominated a candidate at least this good for the Supreme Court, though doubtless there’d be some differences from issue to issue.

Immigration: as a libertarian I believe in free and unrestricted movement of people. I see no reason whatsoever that anyone who wants to shouldn’t be able to walk across the border (any border) any time to seek work or for any other reason. On this issue, Paul is decidedly not libertarian. He seems to believe that freedom is only for native-born Americans, and voted for the erection of fences to restrict the freedom of movement of Mexicans. But so did Barack Obama. Recently, Obama has proposed cutting the funds for further extension of the border fence. However, I suspect Ron Paul would eliminate the militaristic checkpoints stopping all drivers in the Southwest. Again, I don’t really like Paul or his stand on the issue, but he’s not significantly worse than Obama.

Marijuana: Barack Obama claims to be okay with medical marijuana, but this is belied by the continued arrest and persecution of cannabis clubs in California and elsewhere. Ron Paul simply wants to legalize it. Advantage Paul.

Crime: Democrats have long been accused of being soft on crime, whereas Republicans have long been accused of being criminals. The last two administrations have proven both of these calumnies to be true. The Bush/Cheney administration was the most criminal in American history, and the Obama administration has completely let them off the hook. I don’t know if Ron Paul would have actually prosecuted the criminals in the Bush administration had he been elected, but he certainly couldn’t have done less than Barack Obama has.

I could go on with many other issues — freedom of choice, Palestine, government surveillance of citizens, welfare, etc. — but on issue after issue, Paul ranges from significantly better than Obama to no worse. When you get down to it, the only thing that Barack Obama has really delivered in the last year and a half is a slight improvement in credit card terms and a brief extension of unemployment benefits. By contrast, if Ron Paul had been elected, Guantánamo would be closed and we’d be out of Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s hardly an ideal scenario. The economy would still be in the toilet. Global warming would still be pushing us toward complete environmental disaster with no effective action from the government. Tens of millions of Americans would be without adequate health care. But how is that any different from the situation we’re in now? If the Democrats can’t deliver on Democratic issues like the environment, healthcare, and the economy, then we might as well vote for a Republican who would at least deliver on not torturing and assassinating people.

Selling Off Old Macs and PCs

2010-02-17T02:42:46Z

I have two desktop PowerMacs to get rid of, two Mac Minis, and one PC running either Windows 2000 or Linux. (I’ll have to boot it to find out.) Update: it’s Ubuntu and Windows 2000. If anyone wants them they’re for sale to the highest bidder. Minimum bid on all items is showing up at my apartment in Brooklyn and hauling them away. I’ll probably put them on Craig’s List or eBay soon, but in the meantime here’s what I’ve got:

One 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo Mac Mini, 55.89 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM
AS IS. One 2GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini, 160 GB hard drive?, 4 GB RAM, possibly non-functional Bluetooth and/or Wireless; boots and runs but I won’t swear it will survive shipping and likely better for parts
One PowerMac G4 (AGP graphics) desktop, 450MHz?, 576MB RAM, 38.34 GB HD
One PowerMac G5 dual desktop, 2.5 GHz, 2GB RAM, 233.64GB HD; runs Mac OS X 10.5.2, Leopard
One whitebox PC running Ubuntu Linux and Windows 2000, 1 GHz AMD processor, 512 MB RAM, somewhere north of 10 GB hard drive (maybe 40GB?)

I’ll update the list as I boot them and remind myself what they actually have. If you’re interested, drop me an e-mail.

Upgrading Wordpress to 2.9.1

2010-02-13T15:42:30Z

If this blog goes dark, you’ll know why. This always scares me. I wish WordPress had reliable XML export and import, not SQL.

I upgraded The Cafes yesterday. The automatic upgrade failed, but manual upgrade seems to have succeeded.

OK. Seems like the upgrade completed successfully. Holler if you notice any problems. I think I’ll spend the rest of the morning straightening out the old computer mess as part of my general effort to simplify, clean up, and declutter my apartment.

Oops. Forgot to reenable the plugins including Akismet so there’s already a lot of spam. Bleach. Fixed.

eBay is Unfair to Buyers

2010-02-06T12:49:40Z

Every time I bid on eBay I see this:

Confirm Bid.
You are agreeing to a contract -- You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you're the winning bidder. You are responsible for reading the full item listing, including the seller's instructions and accepted payment methods. Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item. " title="Review and Confirm Bid" width="882" height="659" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1003060" />

Notice that bit about “You are agreeing to a contract — You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you’re the winning bidder.” Why don’t sellers have to adhere to it too?

Time and again when I finally manage to score a really good deal on something, the seller cancels the auction, refuses to sell the item, tries to change the price or terms after the close of the auction, or otherwise reneges on the deal. If my bid is a contract, why isn’t their listing? Or conversely, if a seller can back out of a deal whenever they feel like it, why can’t a buyer?

eBay provides a valuable service, and network effects have shut down almost all its competitors over time, but buyers and sellers are extremely unhappy with it. Make no mistake, eBay is vulnerable. A savvy competitor could challenge it within a year. Paul Graham figured this out two years ago:

I suspect EBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.

I wonder if anyone’s taken him up on it? I’m too comfortable in my current job to be very entrepreneurial about this opportunity right now, but if I were to find myself suddenly unemployed, this is probably the arena I’d attack. That said, if anyone wants to go after this and needs the strategy, contact me (or figure it out yourself–it isn’t that hard.) Be warned that like most great ideas, actually implementing an eBay killer is 99% perspiration, but I’d be happy to sell the 1% inspiration for 1% of the company.

Microsoft is Leaving Money on the Table

2010-02-06T01:12:45Z

If Windows were priced similarly to Mac OS X, I would have by now bought at least one full copy each of XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Instead the last non-bundled Windows I bought was Windows 2000 right before XP came out. It’s too damned expensive, and the DRM is too annoying. In fact, I can buy a full computer with Windows for roughly the cost of one Windows 7 license; but I can’t reuse the software on my Mac in Parallels or Bootcamp so I won’t even do that.

If someone cracked Windows 7 activation so I could use it on multiple machines, maybe I could bring myself to pay the $250+ Microsoft wants for a copy; but as is I’ll just do without. Looks like someone’s selling old copies of Vista Home Basic for $99 and Ultimate for $135. Maybe I’ll grab one of those. XP costs $90-300 if you can even find a copy.

Checking prices on Amazon today, Windows 7 Professional retails for about $250 and Windows 7 Ultimate costs around $300. Even an upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate costs almost $200. By way of contrast, Mac OS X Snow Leopard costs about $25; there’s no annoying activation to fight with; and you can install it clean on as many machines as you like. If you want to pay a little more attention to the legalese, then you can buy a 5-license family pack for under $50. The current version of Windows is literally 10 times as expensive as the current version of Mac OS X, and that’s being generous to Windows. If we compare to Ultimate edition instead, Windows is twelve times as expensive. If we want to install it on 5 computers, it’s 20-24 times as expensive. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair since Apple’s tight control of hardware means pretty much all Mac OS X sales are upgrades, but even then the cheapest Windows 7 Upgrade is more than 3 times as expensive as Snow Leopard. How’d that happen? Weren’t PCs supposed to be cheaper?

I’ll tell you what happened: Microsoft still has an effective monopoly on PC operating systems, and they’re protecting it. While the price of most software is going down, the price of Windows is going up. Office is below $100, but there’s real competition for word processors and spreadsheets. There’s no competition for Windows Mac OS X won’t run on most PC hardware, and desktop Linux is a failed project. Microsoft figure sit can make more money squeezing people who ar elocked into their platform than by selling a few extra copies to folks like me who have a choice.

Trumpeter Swans

2010-01-31T23:54:21Z

This morning I took a Zipcar out to do some targeted birding on Long Island. First stop was the Timber Point Golf Course West Marina for the Dovekie. However the marina had frozen over and it left overnight. Damn. Should have gone yesterday. And the pictures others got were so cute! These are adorable birds, and you usually have to take a pelagic to get even a quick glimpse of one flying by half a klick away.

Then 30 miles northeast to Upper Lake in Yaphank for my life Trumpeter Swans. The lake had also frozen over, but there was a little water in the far north corner of the lake, and there they were:

Only it turns out to due to captive breeding and release programs Trumpeter Swans aren’t accepted as countable in New York. Double Damn. This is actually the 5th swan species for my list (after Mute, Black, Whooper and Tundra) but only 2–Mute and Tundra–are countable where I saw them.

Apologies for the photo, by the way. The birds were far away, and I’m back to my Tamron 28-300 for the moment while I wait out the rumored 3 Canon releases in February. Maybe I’ll rent a 400 f/4 DO in the meantime. I have been haunting Craig’s List and eBay, but not actually winning anything so far.

The swans had been reported much closer to the publicly accessible viewing area and within easy photo range, but that was before the lake froze over. Fortunately I had a scope. Otherwise I could have never ID’d the relevant field marks on these two. In this photo you can see the large, sloping black bills, and in binoculars you could make out the black legs, both of which rule out the common invasive Mute Swan. However the scope was necessary to establish that there wasn’t any yellow around the eye, which would have tunred thes two into the somewhat more common Tundra swans.

As I was finishing up at Upper Lake, some other birders drove up who reported that they’d heard from the Internet that the Dovekie had been seen today, so I raced back to Timber Point. Only the reports proved wrong. The Internet reports had been of previous days’ sightings. The Dovekie has likely returned to its natural home on the open ocean (we hope). Swim well little bird.

Tagged Gulls ID’d

2010-01-28T12:17:22Z

The USGS has identified both of the tagged Ring-billed Gulls I found recently. As expected, both were tagged by Dr. Tom French in Massachusetts.

A99 from Gravesend Bay was banded at the Upper Blackstone Wastewater Treatment Plant in Worcester, Massachusetts on November 5, 2008. Sex unknown and born in 2005 or earlier.

A288 from Prospect Park was banded at the Quinsigamond State Park in Worcester County, Massachusetts on October 27, 2009, just a few months before I saw it. Sex unknown and born in 2008 or earlier. (Probably 2008 would be my guess based on the bird’s plumage when I found it.)

Prediction: The Apple Tablet is Going to Flop Worse Than the Newton

2010-01-27T13:02:33Z

The more I hear about the rumored Apple tablet coming later today, the more I’m convinced this isn’t going to work. The love child of an iPod Touch and a Kindle might be pretty but it isn’t world changing in the way the iPhone and the Mac were. More to the point, it won’t save the media industry from their own outdated business models. Newspaper publishers and magazine publishers and book publishers are so desperate for some hope of salvation that they’ll swim to anyone who promises to throw them a life preserver, not noticing that the life preserver is made out of lead. Remember, we’re talking about people who think the problem with HTML is that it isn’t more like PDF. The surest sign that a technology will fail is when senior citizen C-level execs are gaga over it.

I could be totally wrong about this, as could everyone else who’s been posting rumors about what the Apple tablet is actually going to be and actually going to do. It could well be that the use case for the tablet is something we haven’t even imagined yet, and if so all bets are off. However, if the fundamental raison d’être for the tablet is simply to be a nice e-book/magazine/newspaper reader with network connectivity and a built-in iTunes content store, it’s DOA. Microsoft made this mistake with Blackbird, MSN, and Silverlight. AOL, Prodigy, Genie, and Compuserve all made this mistake; and it killed three of them, and is slowly killing the last. Apple made this mistake before itself with eWorld. (Remember that?)

The bottom line is that the Web wins. The Web is the content delivery platform. Paid or free, what people want is an open two-way platform based on networked hypertext. Furthermore, that platform should be as open as possible. The more DRM is imposed, the less people will use it. Even a simple registration form is enough to drive more than half of potential readers away. If the content for the iPad isn’t on the Web — if it’s in some nonstandard, closed, non-editable format like PDF that’s served only from Apple’s servers or the servers of big media over some proprietary protocol — the tablet will fail. If the content looks good on an iPad but doesn’t look good in Firefox on Linux, or Chrome on Windows, or in Internet Explorer with JavaScript turned off, the tablet will fail. If you can read an article, but you can’t save it, or e-mail it, or copy and paste from it, the tablet will fail.

Sorry Big Media. This has been tried before and failed before, many, many times. Sprinkling magic Apple pixie dust over a bad business model won’t make it profitable. Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesen gave you the most important technological development in publishing since Gutenberg, and you’ve spent 20 years proving you have no clue whatsoever how to use it while teenagers blogging from their parents’ basements beat you up and took your lunch money. A shiny new toy from Apple won’t save you from your own incompetence.

Of course, the rumors could be totally false. Use as an ePaper reader could just be one thing the tablet does, and the one that’s gotten the most ink for the same reason that half the new sitcoms in any given year are set in a TV or radio station. Media folks just love to write about themselves. The Apple tablet could have uses and abilities well beyond some sort of content distribution platform that isn’t the Web. Steve Jobs is way smarter than all the heads of the media empires put together. The Apple tablet could be an open development and distribution platform for Web content, games, portable applications, and more. It could finally give us hand writing recognition that works. It could finally give us voice-recognition that works. It could have a Cablecard slot and a DRM-free DVR. It could give us satellite Internet connectivity from anywhere on the planet and a pony; and if it does, I want one. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple manages to completely reinvent how we interact with a general purpose computer. After all, they’ve done it before. But if all the tablet offers is a slightly less locked down version of the Kindle with a color screen and a better user interface, Apple shouldn’t have bothered.