Too bad they...
by
Uptown+Joe
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Too bad they were late on tons of Christmas stuff.
Some people won't be getting those iPods until Feb 2005.
Re:Too bad they...
by
spilich
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I couldn't agree more. I placed a pretty big order of christmas presents for my family on Dec 6, and all of my items had a projected delivery date of Dec 20. When I complained on the 19th that a lot of my stuff hadn't shipped, they still told me that I'd be delivered by the 24th but tried to extort more money out of me to upgrade my shipping to priority. Finally, on the 22nd they sent me an email saying that because of problems with the supplier, they won't deliver some of my stuff till mid Jan. I understand that if the supplier runs out of stock it's not their fault, but it really pisses me off that they waited untill two days before christmas to tell me I won't be getting my stuff. I'll probably still buy from amazon, but NEVER during the christmas season again.
Funny coincidence?
by
AndreyF
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I bought 5 books on Amazon that day-- I used up my gift certificates from Christmas and ordered a textbook for next semester.
What is it about that site...
by
abirdman
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What is it about the iWon.com site that makes me feel all slimy and dirty? Is it the fact that they're major purveyors of spam? Or could it be all the "popup blocker" ads they run to fund their site, duping the rubes into thinking there's a downloadable software solution to the problem that they and their ilk are doing everything to promote--the indiscriminate installation of spyware, malware, and popups.
It's mildly interesting that Amazon is breaking sales records, but I don't believe a word from that awful site... and as another poster already mentioned-- there's damn little content in the article.
-- Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
but, but, what about P2P?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
sales of consumer electronics surpassed book sales for the first time and was its largest sales category...
The retailer added that customers bought more than 1 million items from its music category during each of two back-to-back weeks this month.
wait wait! but, but, I thought P2P would kill both these markets...
Re:Which day?
by
jedidiah
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's the biggest shopping day for brick and mortar. If everyone is out at the malls, they are far less likely to be at home plugged into the computer.
-- A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How does this compare to retail giants?
by
Luscious868
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I wonder how this compares to the total sales of bricks and mortar retail giants like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Does anybody have any idea?
Not just books
by
moterizer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Nightly News reported that (for the first time) electronic items outsold books.
Are you kidding me? You do not actually suggesting using MySQL for this kind of task on that scale, do you?
How are you going to do hot backups? Lock the whole db for the duration of this backup? This might be sufficient for your "me and my family" homepage but it's certainly impossible for Amazon. Hell they have just introduced Views and "Initial support for rudimentary triggers".
I use MySQL exclusively and like it but even I know that it isn't suitable for the really big stuff...
Oranges to apples
by
Guillermito
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think it wouldn't be fair comparing an online shop to a traditional one, at least from the IT perspective.
When customers purchase at WalMart, they only "hit the database" at check-out at the cash registrar. (OK, maybe they can check prices with a barcode scanner, but that's marginal)
In an online shop, the whole process is supported by the aplication: searching for items, showing images, specifications, recommendations, and of course, also the check-out.
Moreover, Amazon.com is a particularly complex online shop. They support things like wish lists, recommendations based on your purchase history, they even keep track of the items you have seen in your current session ("The page you made"), etc.
All of this add complexity, and that complexity must reflect in the IT infrastructure they're using. Not to mention that they have to support not only the customers that purchase items, but also those who just visit the site, browse for items, but choose not no buy anything.
Re:Which day?
by
microTodd
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Perhaps on the day last week when Harry Potter Book 6 became available for pre-order. Wouldn't that book alone perhaps count for a million or so of the 2.8 million sales? Especially since Book 5 sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours?
-- "You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
32 per second? Whoop-de-doo!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ever been in a Walmart? How many times to you hear a 'beep' as an item is registered at the checkout?
I suspect most large, busy stores clock around 20-30 items sold per second on a regular basis. An enterprise the scale of WalMart might clock in thousands per second for all stores on exceptionally busy days.
This might be a 'record day' for Amazon, but it's hardly news.
Not compared to Wal*Mart...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
"Amazon set a new record of items sold on a single day. More than 2.8 million units or 32 items per second. That's a big store."
Not compared to Wal*Mart, which probably sells 2.8 million items per second...
As usual, no context for the numbers
by
wealthychef
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· Score: 2, Insightful
SOUNDS like a lot of business, but how much is a lot nowadays? I'd like to know if they are doing twice as much as their nearest competitors, or how many sales per second Home Depot does, etc. Instead we report a large number and stand back to wait for the ignorant people like me to go "wow." This looks like another case of lazy reporters basically forwarding press releases by position advocates and calling that a news article. No wonder blogs are taking over the world!
One way round I've thought of is have a minimum of two MySQL DB servers. One being the "Master" and the other the Slave via replication. When backup time comes around, stop the replication, make a backup of the Slave DB then restart the replication (the Slave will then catchup to the Master).
Of course, in a "industrial" setting, you'll have multiple Slave servers to help spread the load and keep everything on RAID systems with extensive MySQL logging as well...
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad they were late on tons of Christmas stuff. Some people won't be getting those iPods until Feb 2005.
I bought 5 books on Amazon that day-- I used up my gift certificates from Christmas and ordered a textbook for next semester.
What is it about the iWon.com site that makes me feel all slimy and dirty? Is it the fact that they're major purveyors of spam? Or could it be all the "popup blocker" ads they run to fund their site, duping the rubes into thinking there's a downloadable software solution to the problem that they and their ilk are doing everything to promote--the indiscriminate installation of spyware, malware, and popups.
It's mildly interesting that Amazon is breaking sales records, but I don't believe a word from that awful site... and as another poster already mentioned-- there's damn little content in the article.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
wait wait! but, but, I thought P2P would kill both these markets...
That's the biggest shopping day for brick and mortar. If everyone is out at the malls, they are far less likely to be at home plugged into the computer.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I wonder how this compares to the total sales of bricks and mortar retail giants like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Does anybody have any idea?
Nightly News reported that (for the first time) electronic items outsold books.
Are you kidding me? You do not actually suggesting using MySQL for this kind of task on that scale, do you? How are you going to do hot backups? Lock the whole db for the duration of this backup? This might be sufficient for your "me and my family" homepage but it's certainly impossible for Amazon. Hell they have just introduced Views and "Initial support for rudimentary triggers". I use MySQL exclusively and like it but even I know that it isn't suitable for the really big stuff...
I think it wouldn't be fair comparing an online shop to a traditional one, at least from the IT perspective.
When customers purchase at WalMart, they only "hit the database" at check-out at the cash registrar. (OK, maybe they can check prices with a barcode scanner, but that's marginal)
In an online shop, the whole process is supported by the aplication: searching for items, showing images, specifications, recommendations, and of course, also the check-out.
Moreover, Amazon.com is a particularly complex online shop. They support things like wish lists, recommendations based on your purchase history, they even keep track of the items you have seen in your current session ("The page you made"), etc.
All of this add complexity, and that complexity must reflect in the IT infrastructure they're using. Not to mention that they have to support not only the customers that purchase items, but also those who just visit the site, browse for items, but choose not no buy anything.
Perhaps on the day last week when Harry Potter Book 6 became available for pre-order. Wouldn't that book alone perhaps count for a million or so of the 2.8 million sales? Especially since Book 5 sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours?
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Ever been in a Walmart? How many times to you hear a 'beep' as an item is registered at the checkout?
I suspect most large, busy stores clock around 20-30 items sold per second on a regular basis. An enterprise the scale of WalMart might clock in thousands per second for all stores on exceptionally busy days.
This might be a 'record day' for Amazon, but it's hardly news.
"Amazon set a new record of items sold on a single day. More than 2.8 million units or 32 items per second. That's a big store."
Not compared to Wal*Mart, which probably sells 2.8 million items per second...
SOUNDS like a lot of business, but how much is a lot nowadays? I'd like to know if they are doing twice as much as their nearest competitors, or how many sales per second Home Depot does, etc. Instead we report a large number and stand back to wait for the ignorant people like me to go "wow." This looks like another case of lazy reporters basically forwarding press releases by position advocates and calling that a news article. No wonder blogs are taking over the world!
Currently hooked on AMP
One way round I've thought of is have a minimum of two MySQL DB servers. One being the "Master" and the other the Slave via replication. When backup time comes around, stop the replication, make a backup of the Slave DB then restart the replication (the Slave will then catchup to the Master).
Of course, in a "industrial" setting, you'll have multiple Slave servers to help spread the load and keep everything on RAID systems with extensive MySQL logging as well...