Slashdot Mirror
Amazon's Special Thank-You
theodp writes "To commemorate its 10th Anniversary, Amazon.com announced that on July 16th customers will receive a special thank-you - a concert featuring Bob Dylan and Norah Jones. Of course, customers will be squinting at streaming video while Amazon employees actually attend the concert at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, but isn't it the thought that counts?"
"Will" receive?
now stop trying to patent mouse clicking, you noob.
I would've accepted a coupon or something.
Man if only i could be that lucky to be a amazon.com customer!
I gave the bat commader a high five.
...round numbers of years until the one-click-shopping patent expires.
Me too! Now I only need to become a /. editor...
http://phx.corporate-ir.net???
A free concert I can't goto and with 2 people I probably wouldn't go see anyway! Gee wiz Amazon you really pulled out the stops on this one!!
Seriously wouldnt offering free 2 or 3 day shipping on all items for the weekend have been better?
You shouldnt have! I mean a 30% discount on my next..10 (for the 10th anniversary of course) purchases would suffice! Really!
Is there anything even remotely resembling a story here, or is it just a blatant advertisement?
Is Bob Dylan trendy again or is he so untrendy that it's cool to like him? Or was he just cheap and available? They should have at least tried to get an 80's band.
That's one thing I hate, corps rewarding their employees and making it seem like they're doing it for the consumer. Why don't they post pictures of the company picnic too.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
No
:)
/sacasam
/. are not known for their sense of humor...
If I want to see the damn concert I would download the bootleg file on bittorrent.
You never know...people on
Company A makes a shedload of cash so throws a huge celebrity party to celebrate how much money its customers gave it. Not only that, they broadcast video of its employees having fun accross the whole world. Why exactly is this so generous?
Maybe Enron could release footage of their last stockholders party so we can look at streaming footage of the champagne being quaffed?
Dont get me wrong, I'm a fan of amazon, but if this was microsoft, people would be shouting them down.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Well I guess Amazon's servers have nothing to worry about. But those poor employees....
-R
What is this, some sort of, "Look at the perks that our employees get, thanks to massive investment and you customers" kind of advertising? Is it "come work for amazon" or "hah! we own!"?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
That would have cost them money.
Streaming a video, on the other hand, only costs them about $50 in bandwidth.
I suggest purchasing the services of exotic dancers for an "Amazonian" themed brouhaha. Certainly nobody would turn down a live feed of the cultural tribute...
They don't have to do anything, even if it is some sham they say is "for the customers," they don't have to do shit to show they appreciate the business and people will still buy from them.
Oh please! Throw me your table scraps, Amazon! Look! I'm begging!
This is truly quite sad. Oh how the mighty have fallen indeed. A folk HERO singing a benefit for Amazon. I hope they at least sold a lot of his goddamned albums.
Dylan was really at his best in his early years. After his tragic motorcycle accident all of his albums steadily declined in quality. He was easily the most influential singer/songwriter of the 60s.
I almost died when I saw him do those horrible Klein commercials. Or was it the GAP?
Bob Dylan. Sellout.
That's all I gotta say.
zosxavius photography
Talking of celebration gifts, I prefer Yahoo's idea of offering registered members a free Baskin-Robbins icecream last March. It was a nice occasion for everyone in my lab to bike over and take a break from... er... working.
To do list for Windows
From a purely business perspective, how on Earth are Amazon able to afford this?
Okay, so it is 10 years since they were founded, but in that time, how much of a profit have they turned? I understood that there were hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sunk costs with the company, where the only possible return is in the stock price, but I thought that Amazon was still producing negative returns on the balance sheet.
If I was one of the VC firms that initially funded Amazon I would have dragged Bezos over the coals long ago, but I am amazed at the ability of Amazon to continue despite the losses they have suffered to date (losses that would have crushed most other companies).
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
For creating an innovative TAX WRITEOFF, disguised as a party for your employees and customers.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Tambourine man....(buffering)...(buffering)....play a song...(buffering)...(buffering)...for me. I'm not slee...(buffering)...(buffering)...py and there is no...(buffering)...(buffering)...place I'm going to.
--Residential Interior Design
the fuck would a Sipod be? i mean, if you recall, the $ in 'micro$oft' actually replaces a real letter.
Surely they will be all to knackered having just shipped goodness knows how many copies of the new Harry Potter novel to attend a pop concert :)
I get to see a crappy streaming video of a company party. w00t! Can I see it really good on my dial-up? Will I even hear it on my dial-up? Maybe I shouldn't buy anything on amazon and pay for broadband instead? I get it amazon, I shouldn't do any shopping there anymore. Now do the other poor saps that might even be excited to see and hear Dylan and Jones get screwed because they don't have a fast enough connection? Amazon is clearly run by really smart people.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Proof that Slashdot really has gone downhill. The Apple fanatics were bad enough, but now we have people who don't even know what a frikkin' variable is.
right, i'm sure that he wasn't trying to use it in the micro$oft usage, it was just an appropriate use for a variable.
for whatever trendy protest movement of the day doesn't pay the rent.. dudes gotta make a living... its tough to be a 90 million record selling singer/songwriter these days! ;)
For real, why is everyone bashing Amazon? I buy stuff from them all the time. The prices are very competitive on most items, and the selection of stuff is hard to beat. I've been a pretty loyal customer since 1998, and unless something is significantly cheaper somewhere else, I almost always buy anything I need that they sell there.
If you don't like Bob Dylan or Norah Jones, then don't watch the frickin' concert! Jesus, you'd think that they were having John Ashcroft in concert or something, the way everyone is reacting! ("Let the eagle soar!..." Ugh.)
My company, a large Fortune 100, does this periodically. For special occasions, it will sponsor a concert for the employees and VIPs. Chances are that Amazon was going to have the concert anyway, and decided to Webcast it just to be nice, so give 'em a frickin' break, already!
Sheesh, talk about no good deed going unpunished...
Flagrant self-angrandizement.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
Amazon puts up a free concert, and Slashdot idiots go nuclear. What a surprise.
This isn't deserving of thanks or, 'gee look how kind they are' -- I think of it as an extra service provided by a company. Some will enjoy it, some won't. Why is it deserving of such scorn?
When AOL did this several times over the past years, with the Rolling Stones, for example, did that deserve scorn?
Music is highly subjective, but it's the height of adolescent immaturity to slag off Bob Dylan and Norah Jones as crap if you don't like their style of music.
Get the fuck over yourselves.
(It was time to burn the karma anyway)
-Stu
is it bad when you get port scanned by Slashdot? Seems to be a current trend. Wake up, Taco!
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
Yeah, so it's bad form to reply to one's self, but it seems the best way to address the comments brought up.
Before people flame me for wild ass guesses, note that I said 'I thought...', not 'Amazon is definitely...', so they are opinions based on common media reporting.
Okay, 2 years of profitibility in 10, and only the most recent two. Congratulations, so they now have a viable business model. I doubt that many companies can repeat their ability to absorb 8 years of losses before turning a profit. Yes, it takes guts and determination to stick it out for that long, and that is amazing.
4 out of 5 businesses fail in the first 5 years, and 9 out of 10 of the remaining businesses fail before their tenth year (not totally random statistics - look them up). The most common reasons for failure are under-capitalisation (i.e. never establishing a viable cash flow) and over-capitalisation (not wisely reinvesting the profit), so the fact that Amazon could pull this off is amazing, but a lot of questions would have been targeted at the CxO level as to why there are no returns, especially with the modern trend of short term profitability over longer term strength.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
The $-notation is used as a prefix for variables in Perl and other languages. Unfortunately, the '-' symbol used within is not a valid character for variable names under those languages.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Personally, I think that copyrights on music should last until the writer dies, and they should only be given to the song writer.
Let me say that again. You never never never want to base the length of copyright on someones death. There are enough things that makes passing on hard enough. We don't need to put the added stress on people with the idea that "every day I stay alive is another residue check my family can receive." Or worse "if we unplug dad from the respirator out estate has to give up our copyright." Linking financial matters (even more than we already have) with the process of dying is inhuman. This is one of those cases where something sounds like a good idea but the consequences are disgusting.
... they wouldn't have spammed the shit out of me. That, and total ignorance by their "service" when repeatedly asked to stop spamming, made me an ex-customer. So Jeff, with all due respect, stick your video where the sun never shines. Sideways.
Oh, and before you ask, I had set all my account preferences not to receive "newsletters".
Amazon's new patented "one-click" birthday celebration concert streaming technology...
:wq
a streaming video of a "concert" they probably pulled off the shelf, dusted off, and converted to a format they could easily push into your system.
now that's a celebration.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
if you rob them they award you and if you give money to them you gain an excellent streaming video... good!
I hope they offer free downloads of recordings to Amazon.com customers. That would actually have some value.
Of course, customers will be squinting at streaming video while Amazon employees actually attend the concert at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, but isn't it the thought that counts?
Yeah, but Amazon employees still won't be able to understand Dylan any better than the poor schleps squinting at home.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
That must be a record of some kind, even for Amazon.
Actually, the reason has little to do with Amazon's policies, and more with any company that publically masterbates in front of a croud, and tells us that it's a present for us. If this was just a company party, that'd be one thing. Pushing it as a "Show of Thanks" or gift to the customers is a joke, and they're getting called on it, big time.
Imagine it on a personal level. Imagine that your wife or whoever your significant other is comes home, and you invite them into the bedroom. Tell them "This is to say thank you for all you've done for me," then proceed to masterbate. If they don't get hit/slap/leave/laugh at/divorce you, I'd be suprised (some have kinkier partners).
This is what Amazon did. It could have given away tickets to 100 lucky customers. It could have given away other prizes. It could have done ANYTHING that actually gave some benefit to the customers. I don't even like American Idol, but I'd rather watch it on TV than a junk streaming concert. If I'm going to sit for 2+ hours to watch something, I want some chips, a drink, and a sofa. That's just me, but I would assume this is true of the average Amazon shopper as well.
I8-D
Where's the logic in extending the copyright 70 years past the author's life? This seems like the other extreme.
Everybody whines and bitches about the RIAA screwing the artists and says we should support the artists by going to concerts instead. Then when somebody does a private concert for some company everybody calls the artist a sellout. The truth is that he probably makes more money doing these kinds of things (including the Gap, etc) than he makes selling albums. Every band has been labeled a sellout at one time or another. That term is thrown around far too often that it has lost some of its meaning.
Call the bookstore.
"Hey, can you order title X,yan z for me?"
BOokstores are 90% of the time willing to order books they dont have in stock for you, espscially the smaller ones. Yeah, its not gonna beat amazon on price or speed, but at least youre helping out someone besides a faceless corporation.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I haven't done business with Amazon since I had my lawyer send them a warning not to use their unilaterally "revised" privacy policy to release my personal info without my explicit authorization. Watching Dylan sing about "Maggie's Farm" and a "Neighborhood Bully" with an Amazon logo would really bring me down.
--
make install -not war
And when you do, you don't have to pay until the book comes in. And when it comes in, if you flip through it for an hour and don't think it's quite what you really wanted, you can hand it back to a bookseller and say "that's really not exactly what I needed." You don't spend a cent. (At least that's the way it works in at least one of the big brick-and-mortar bookstore chains.)
Or worse, what if someone wants your work but doesn't want to pay you royalties? Imagine the horror of Mickey Mouse showing up at your door with a silenced 9 mm pistol...
aeee ahhhh ohhh mmm amnrgffhhf jaaalll ooollll gaaaaaa
After 30 years of listening to his songs, it's come to this...
I think I'd rather have Jeffy boy send me a box of vomit. That's right ladies, a box of vomit.
Out of curiosity, have to tried ordering books from Amazon.com and shipping to AU/NZ?
I was stunned by how exorbitantly expensive books are in AU/NZ (a paperback in AU costs the same as a hardback in the US).
Will Amazon ship to AU?
Does the discount (from AMZN) and the reduction in price (US vs AU) make up the cost of shipping to AU?
If the shipping doesn't rise as quickly as the discount & reduction, what point do you break even? Or, does the shipping cost rise too rapidly?
Any customs issues?
And, why do books cost so damn much in AU? You seem to import form the already expensive UK. Why not import from the cheaper US?
Thanks
Where's the logic in extending the copyright 70 years past the author's life? This seems like the other extreme.
It was originally somewhat less, but the idea is that you don't want to make killing off an author a profitable thing. Otherwise, someone might off Crichton or Ludlum and start selling their books on the cheap.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"I'ts not that I had anything against the man, I just wanted the rights to cover his songs for free."
Blah blah blah patent blah blah...
Okay fine, hate them for the patent stuff, that's a valid answer to my question. But that's not what everyone was complaining about. A quick search on the front comment page for the word "patent" picked up three comments about it. All the others are stuff like this:
A free concert I can't goto and with 2 people I probably wouldn't go see anyway...
Why don't they post pictures of the company picnic too.
Throw me your table scraps, Amazon! Look! I'm begging!
I'm not trying to pick on anyone, but what I don't understand is why people are acting like it's some kind of grave insult to us that Amazon is offering a free Webcast of a concert they are hosting. Whether you like the artists or not, I might add, they are two pretty big names. I'm sure there are lots of average schmoes out there who will enjoy seeing the concert, even if it is streaming over the Web.
Just in case someone from Amazon happens to read Slashdot and makes it this far into the comments, the repliers to my parent comment are right about the patent stuff, but I, a long-time paying customer, do think the free concert is a good idea. Though I probably won't watch it, since I'm not a big fan of Dylan or Jones, I do appreciate the thought and willingness to Webcast it. And I think that the views expressed above are weird exceptions; most people out there feel the same as I do.
Is this a live stream? If so, would it even be worth watching? Granted, Dylan has lost his voice so much you might not be able to tell the difference, but I have yet to view any real-time video stream that was worth the time and effort. If Amazon really wanted to reward their customers, how about making the binary files for the DVD available for download?
...as long as it doesn't affect the real important event of the day... the release of the new Harry Potter book!
---
Amazon treats its employees to a picnic but tries to frame it as some kind of service to the customers.
It is a service. Some people will enjoy it, and thus they win, and Amazon wins.
Others will be cynical about any form of marketing and pissed off that people actually like this sort of thing. They take comfort that in In The New Geek World Order, das ist verboten! They re-read the GNU manifesto and tear up.
And the greatest number are those that don't care either way. No harm, no foul.
-Stu
Careful, this is just a plot to make internet usage go through the roof so that terrorists can hack through American nuclear power plants' firewalls undetected!