Slashdot Mirror

This has nothing to do with sales taxes. That's a few percent. It's all about efficient warehouse and distribution operations. Doing that wrong can double operating costs.

WebVan was a popular service during the dot-com boom. They just had an operating cost problem. They had about 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. So their order processing and delivery costs were too high.

One of WebVan's former executives realized that order processing had to be much more automated for this concept to work. So he founded Kiva Robotics. Upwards of 15% of online orders are handled by Kiva robots. If you've ordered from a major online retailer, (Acumen Brands, Drugstore.com, Gap, Toys-R-Us, Walgreens...) a Kiva robot probably handled the order.

Last year, Amazon bought Kiva Robotics. The whole company. Then they started building warehouses near major US cities and talking about same-day delivery. Those warehouses will have a lot of Kiva robots and not too many humans.

While some grocery chains like Safeway do delivery, they're not very good at it. They're picking from store shelves. So they don't know, when the order is taken, if the item is in stock. Safeway tends to deliver with some items missing. Automated warehousing operations know what they have in stock when the system takes the order.

It's going to be like Webvan again. But this time, it will be profitable. The retailers who see this coming are very afraid.

This has been known for some time. The biggest energy cost associated with many food products is moving the 2-ton family SUV to and from the grocery store to move 25 pounds of merchandise. Moving a fully loaded semi isn't that expensive per unit weight.

Webvan is coming back. Amazon owns it now. Webvan was popular, but the operating costs were too high. One of Webvan's executives realized that what they needed was robots. He went on to found Kiva Systems, which makes robots for warehouse operations. Kiva robots handle fulfillment at Walgreens.com, Gap.com, Staples.com, and many other big retailers.

Amazon recently bought Kiva. Amazon's CEO is an investor in Rethink Robotics, which makes robot arms and hands. (The Kiva robots move shelf units to human pickers, where a laser pointer shows them what to pick. It looks like eliminating the human pickers is next.) Amazon is opening local warehouses in major cities. Amazon is starting to offer same-day delivery. This time it will be profitable.

Small retailers who are aware of this are very afraid.

Amazon is taking over more and more of retail. They've already taken over books and DVDs. They took over and re-started Webvan. They're building local distribution centers for same day delivery. They bought Kiva Robotics so those warehouses won't need many people.

The glory years of store-based retail are over. No new enclosed mall has been built in the US in a decade. Most retail areas have vacant stores that will never be used again. In a few years, retail will consist of recreational shopping and convenience stores. Everything else will be on line.

Then all we have to worry about is downtime. Read E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops".

Just before Webvan tanked, they were playing around with a similar concept. In the Webvan system, the lockers were refrigerated, since they were delivering food. The concept was to have locker rooms in large apartment buildings in big cities, so you could order food and have it ready for you when you got home. Great idea for NYC and London, where people try to carry groceries on the subway or are stuck shopping at overpriced local shops with small selections.

Webvan is back. It's now owned by Amazon. They don't do perishables, and delivery takes 2-3 days, but you can order about 45,000 food-related products. Amazon plans to grow that business.

This could wipe many more retailers off the face of the earth. If the delivery density is high enough, delivery is cheaper that driving a 2-ton SUV to a mall for 20 pounds of groceries.

Amazon now owns and operates WebVan. See http://www.webvan.com/ "part of the Amazon.com family".

People won't pay because they're angry.

(Warning: this post will break the long-lived social belief that opinions should be entirely devoid of human emotion lest those opinions lose their credibility. If you happen to be someone who believes this adage to be true, then you shouldn't read this post; and instead should please yourself watching the bevy of security camera footage tapes that I'm sure exist. The rest of us human beings can read on.)

That's right, angry... and for a whole lot of reasons, too.

See, when I want a new shirt, I can go to the store, look at it, try it on, ogle at how it looks on me in a mirror, and decide whether or not I want to purchase.

When I want a new car, I can go to a dealership, drive the car around town, inspect every part of it, and make up my mind as to whether or not I really like it.

When I want an apple, I can pick the one I think looks, feels, and even smells the best out of a huge stack of apples at the grocer or at one of many farmer's markets around town. (At the markets, in fact, I'm encouraged by the mom-and-pop vendors to taste the product. But I wouldn't really recommend putting produce up to your nose and smelling it in public.)

However, suddenly, when the product I'm interested in happens to fall into the "information" category, I'm now expected to pay to even find out if a bit of information I want is even available, much less find out what the quality of that data is.

If I want to know what a particular band sounds like, I'm told (by the artists, on more then one occasion) that I should "buy the CD and find out." (A CD costs anywhere from $15-$20 brand new; that much money routinely feeds me nutritiously for a week. I refuse to spend a week's worth of food money only to find out that a certain group's latest offering sounds like crap.

When I want to know whether or not Word XP will fill my word processing needs, I have to not only buy the CD's, but also call Microsoft to get permission to USE the farking things. And that permission only lasts a year or two! (Just when you thought that only shareware was time limited...)

And yes, there are ways around all these problems - but you utilize these methods at risk of being branded a criminal (and possibly persecuted as one) by greedy people with too much free time©.

If a department store hired bouncers and enforced a cover charge at every door - so you'd have to pay ten bucks before even being allowed to go in and see if there are any clothes you might want - how long do you think they would stay in business?

If you bought a book, but were told that several armed police officers would come to your door after a year or two and arrest you if you hadn't paid for that book again by that time... how many bookstores would stay in business?

If your only choice of produce were limited to several small, online pictures and word-of-mouth reputation vouchers, how long do you think it would be before your online-only grocery store went out of business? (Oh, wait... we know the answer to that one already.)

As a people, we're angry. Angry that someone went out there went and changed the established, customer-is-always-right, service-with-a-smile rules around. Angry that the new system of commercialism is based on blind purchases, leaps of faith, zero-privacy, and other, similar systems designed from the ground-up to screw the customer at every turn. Angry that a group of well-funded, shiny-toothed suits have decided to try and turn what was designed to be a free system of communication into yet another way to make money. And angry that anyone who thinks this is a total crock and peacefully subverts this mockery of a system (even for perfectly legitamate reasons) is branded a criminal and consequently sent to jail and/or robbed of their (legally purchased) equipment.

At this point, it's a wonder people aren't routinely sacking and pillaging the nearest Virgin Records Megastore. I know for me, on a personal note, if Anger were People, I'd be China.

--WorLord

WITH SPAM!!!

Good stuff at $1.79 for a 7oz can.

Few foods are as versatile as SPAM Luncheon Meat.

Then we started using Webvan. Now the groceries come to us. I'm starting to run out of reasons to keep the car.

• Ethernet run through the walls for the network
• Entertainment computer in living room for:
  • Playing DVD's
  • Playing CD's
  • Playing MP3's (see below)
  • Streaming Video
  • Listen to KFOG over the net
  • Look up movies/actors/etc in the IMDB
  • Check out movies and music at The Listology
  • Rent videos from Kozmo
• WebCams in my Dad's bedroom so I can keep an eye on him while working (and kids, eventually)
• Kitchen Computer for:
  • Looking up recipes at SOAR
  • Ordering groceries from WebVan
  • Listening to music while I cook (see above)
  • Maybe hooking up my BarCode reader for easier ordering
  • Be ready for the controllable microwave oven, coffee pot, etc.
• Bedroom computer (possibly an iMac?) to:
  • Do all the stuff that the living room machine does
  • Read Slashdot in bed
  • "etc" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more...)
• My work computers and my wife's
• The internet gateway machine (I wish I could afford a FreeGate box!)
• The File Server with big hard drive to share files and hold 400 CD's worth of MP3's (for instant access anywhere in the house)
• Wireless link to my Land Rover to upload stories, pics, etc. from the road

Okay, so it's not that high-tech, but some of the technologies that make it possible for someone with no time to figure out include:

• IP Forwarding
• Samba
• NetATalk (eventually)
• The overall elegance of ethernet
• A lot of very helpful friends

All I need now are simple instructions for setting up a webcam under Linux (and a source of cheap webcams), to get NetATalk up and running (My wife's a school teacher, and has mac's at home to match the ones at school) and to find something that will let a Linux box see a directory on another system as if it were one of its one (like mapping a network drive with Windows/Samba.)

This is fun stuff!

Now this is a comment with some sense. How does the radio work? Do radio stations pay for every time they play the song, or, as it usually works around my neck of the woods, do new CDs get sent free of charge to the station with notes asking the DJ to play the song to generate some interest in the artist, perhaps as a prelude to the artist coming into town and giving a performance. Anyway, the author of 'ghost performances' obviously has a good idea of what is going on. I wish the 'industry' had half an inkling of what is GOOD for them. Perhaps have CDs of very high quality MP3s on the 'big company's web site which cost some small fee for price of bandwidth to send out the file and storage space on server to store the file. most people distribute somewhat lesser quality (128 sampling) MP3, this generates desire for the high quality stuff, like CDs, performances in the area, etc. maybe another idea is to extend the MP3 to include advertising info which updates from a server: 'Remember fans, we are coming to the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 29th, be there!'. anyway.... frknfrk. WebVan (get groceries and other stuff delivered to you door: in San Francisco now and opening in Atlanta soon).

Not Peapod! Why, if we didn't have Peapod, then where would we get our groceries online? Oh, wait a second, we still have Webvan, Streamline, and countless other local companies. So there'll be a lot of shakeout among the various online companies, and the less successful ones will die or be bought out buy the more successful ones, but that's the market cycle as it's always been.

Even Ponzi's ventures eventually ran out of money and collapsed. This internet bubble is no different.

If they want to "complete" your Internet experience through one company, I think the only type of service they're lacking is an online grocery service such as Webvan.com.

Now if they hook up with/acquire someone like that I think they're set.

Finally, he could make phone calls with Dialpad, order groceries for same-day delivery at WebVan, etc.

In case you didn't notice, the article was in the Toronto Star. Toronto is in Canada. WebVan doesn't deliver to Canada. In fact, I'm sure that there are significantly fewer Canadian Internet companies doing deliveries.

Conclusion: Before you decide to do something like this, DO A LITTLE RESEARCH!

I think given scope to do anything I want as long as I was nothing but Net for five days I think I might even end up learning something.

Also, I think that it is a completely different experience if you are a nerd, since you actually know what to look for, and where to look for it.

Finally, he could make phone calls with Dialpad, order groceries for same-day delivery at WebVan, etc.

Conclusion: Before you decide to do something like this, DO A LITTLE RESEARCH!

--

It's not the knowledge that helps. It's the communications. Thousands of people in touch with each other, possibly through OneList. Remember all those instructions on counterrevolutionary terrorist guerrilla tactics that are easily available on the Web? Yeah, those.

Massive insurrection and violence in North Korea, followed by the emergence of a strong dictator, followed (after good-intentioned meddling from the West) by some cobbled-together, easily-botched democracy like any other developing nation. Years of brittle peace, the occasional coup, and struggling economies follow.

Beats the hell out what's currently going on in North Korea, tho.

And the little girl is probably toast, unless (duh) you feed her your own flesh and blood. You're probably not in the greatest of shapes yourself, but if she's dying, and you're still conscious and ambulatory, you could probably cut off a chunk of thigh or something. I mean, food is food. Not a lot of carbos in meat, but better than shoe leather, and it might keep her going until (facetious) WebVan shows up with the delivery, or (serious) an airlift of food shows up.

D'oh! Also forgot to mention that people in touch with portable secure communication thingees can effective pool food resources, hide them from soldiers (although the poor bastards are probably starving themselves, if they want to take it away from you they shouldn't have any), and distribute fairly. As has been mentioned before in this thread, famines are almost always distribution, rather than production, fuckups. Korea's nice farming land -- no reason other than horrifying mismanagement by the incredibly cretinous NK gov for the current terrible sitch.

gomi