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Jeff Bezos Named Time Person of the Year
doomy writes "A pretty stunning story hit Associated Press's wire today. Apparently Jeff "king of cybercommerce" Bezos of Amazon.com fame would be named the Time Magazines's person of the year. The same wire states that Amazon was loosing millions of dollars while this award was given." I've stopped shopping at Amazon personally. Until they drop their lame patent stuff, I figure they don't want my business.
i think you're missing the most important thing that's going on here. bezos is one of the most high profile members of the group of people that have fundamentally changed the economy and the dynamics of the flow of information.
the economy has changed on several key levels in the larger field that bezos is shaping (with others). first of all, we're moving towards a service oriented society, and the increasing IT/IS infrastructure is a combination of service and products. this is part of the larger shift in american economics from a production society to a service society. secondly, on the economic front, think about the amazing amount of wealth funneled into the hands of younger and younger people. FORE, Inc., was recently bought out, and secretaries could retire on the money from their resulting stock options. never before have we seen such a resulting shift of money so fast, and such vast amounts as well. bezos and amazon.com lie at the heart of this revolution.
in terms of the flow of information, it has done two major things. first of all, it has shifted the power from those that hold and dole out information to those that seek it. we've gone from a supply based system to a demand based one. this is about as fundamental a shift as the invention of the printing press. the dot coms also lie at the heart of this radical, sweeping change. the second thing is that it has liberated access to information. think about the stuff you now get to read each morning. i get to read everything from science journals that my university doesn't get to intelligence reports that woul normally be difficult to get. i'm sure you're in the same boat, having unparalleled access to information. again, the dot coms have helped to shape and provide this revolution.
frankly, i think it would have been better to have a person like dyson or someone else who played such a fundamental role in shaping the current internet if they wanted to honor that, but that's just me. but then again i think the century was shaped by far more important people on all levels.
jose nazario jose@biocserver.cwru.edu
click here
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Everyone with the power, keep on moderating this to the top. It's the first thought come into my mind when I read Taco's comment.
HYPOCRISY.
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#19845
I don't know. Some of Bill's donations have been "billions of dollars worth of MS software", not actual cash.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Yeah, when did it become such a challenge to spell this word? I'm getting tired of all the "lucing" being done on /. by those "lucers".
> I think the great untold story of the late 20th
> century is how money replaced war as a way of keeping
> score.
In the last decade alone: Rwanda, Kosovo, Chechnaya.
The twenty-first century has got nothing for me. Jeff Bezos is the perfect symbol of it; money uber alles, robotic greed without limits, backed with cruise missiles. The twenty-first century will be Hell on Earth.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
It's LOSING YOU IDIOTS! They are not LOOSING millions or there would be a riot as the public ran around filling their pockets with loose dollars. Repeat after me: whenever I think of writing "loosing" I will write "losing", because unless you're writing "loosing the dogs of hell" or somesuch there's bloody well no use for "loosing".
The revolution will NOT be televised.
noticed that many of the books have links to fatbrain.
/.
I stopped buying at Amazon when I got their clueless response to my complaints on purchase circles. I've also been watching the book reviews here on
A look at the current book review shows that all but one point to fatbrain, and the exception is to a book not carried by any of the big sellers.
To those criticizing Cmdr. Taco for 'hypocrisy', it helps to have a shred of facts before lighting the flamethrowers..... BTW, the ACs who were most vehement, sure showing your moral courage.
Pete
He knows that customer service rules the web, so he works his employees hard as hell. He wants fast responses to emails and such. One guy got fired for spending too much time on a single customer--fuck quality. He expects his employees to be rah rah about this, too. He had a "slumber party" of responding to emails. Sounds like a damn dictatorship. I will use amazon to get information about a book, but I'll buy it elsewhere.
Charles Spitzig
Time has name some real twerps as "Man of the Year"
Didn't "Time" name Adolf Hitler as "Man of the Year" sometime in the 30's? I would like to know how they select these people. Interesting styles of facial hair, perhaps? Or maybe "People most likely to do something nasty to a large number of people in the next few years and embarrass Time magazine again." Invading Poland. Newt Gingrich, nuff said. Stupid patents. I'm sure there's many more....
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Since Apple made it known that they were going to have a $100M ad budget, Time has put Steve Jobs on the cover twice. Consequently, Apple has reciprocated Time w/ inserts, full color ads, and back-cover ads. Somebody correct this by showing another newsweekly that got similar ad dollars.
Expect a similar Amazon and Time intercourse.
Fatbrian, unfortunately, promotes spam. I've gotten advertisment mail from them on addresses that I NEVER use except to reply to user questions,and no one from fatbrain has ever contacted me via those addys. Other people have complained as well. So no one's hands are exactly clean in this mess...
"But they're suing over a blah blah blah," you're gonna say. Yes, they are. But who are they suing? Barnes & Noble.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes, and I agree. I don't like Barnes & Noble, and here's why:
- They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
- The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
- B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.
"Yes," you're gonna say, "but if Amazon wins, then they can sue anyone over this with precedent."But why would they? B&N is a direct competitor and tried to buy out Amazon.com's main supplier. Amazon would have filed suit against B&N for *anything*. Yes, this is a stupid lawsuit, and it's a stupid patent, and all the rest. Fix the sickness, not the symptoms: reform the Patent Office.
I guess what really bugs me is that everyone's getting themselves worked up into a frenzy over this and not something more important. Patent lawsuits don't kill people, nor do they give people cancer. This is corporate warfare and it doesn't involve individuals.
What's a better topic for us to get riled about? Shit, kids, take your pick:
- US Companies selling defective products overseas
- Mobil Oil involved in Indonesian massacres
- 4,000 babies die every day due to being bottle-fed, thanks to companies like Nestle
But no, we have our panties in a twist because big, bad Amazon.com is suing someone over a stupid patent.I'm willing to boycott them and *all* big companies if an independent company is there to provide the same services with minimal price impact.
So, instead of flaming me and calling me a lackey shill and anal consort of The Man, how about offering solutions? Fatbrain sells most books that I want (ie, all the books I've bought in the past month or so). That's good. Where's a socially-responsible place I can buy CDs from?
See, shopping at Whitey & The Man Bookstore in lieu of Amazon isn't good, it just provides yet another stupid company with incentive to continue their stupid tactics. If you're going to boycott Amazon.com for patent issues, you shouldn't jump in the lap of another fucked up company.
If you really want to fuck over Amazon, use their webpage to pick out books (based on user reviews, etc.), then buy the books at SociallyResponsibleBookstore.com. You get the community and the karma. Woo hoo.
So... what non-stupid online CD stores are there?
[BTW, I haven't read *any* comments offering alternatives to Amazon. You're never going to get a boycott to work if you don't offer alternatives.]
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
One may argue that there should be more bookseller links on the page (fatbrain, bookpool, etc.), and I'd be all in favor of this, but I don't think CmdrTaco needs to specifically address or apologize for having Amazon links.
Bravo- though I don't think Allan Greenspan himself is necessarily a big deal, the office that he holds has radically changed economics. Most people don't even realize the power he holds. Great Paul Krugman paraphrased quote: "You want to know a simple formula for what the rate of unemployment will be in the next year? IT will exactly what Allan Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a tiny fraction of the fact that he is not quite God."
It's amazing the number of economic debates that are totally clueless on this point. When all the NAFTA discussions were going on, people kept harping on the jobs issue. But their Neo-Keynsian analysis is simply irrelevant in a world in which a cental bank sets interest rates.
>
Just had to say, love the Latin.
"Amazon must be destroyed"
hehe... ok bye now.
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
Just because the people who have a vote in this
happened to own some Amazon stock - is no reason
for this to happen.
Slashdot is routinely melodramatic.
Everyone is on a moralistic crusade here. I continue to read it because it's fascinating. Everyone here is David to coporate America's Goliath.
90% of what passes as "commentary" here is uninformed "moralizing" -- if Company A is big, then Company A is bad, if Company B promotes open source than Company B is good.
It's about as critical as a freshman comp English class: "Oh boy, yeah, that book sucked."
"So what if he's losing money."
Well, basically, it's all a matter of when. If I started Amazon.com back in 1980 before almost anyone had anything "online" I'd obviously not make a profit. But should investors back me through 2 decades of negative profit, even if I could start paying off in 2002? It's an economic decision, and perhpas their money could have been spent more prouctively somewhere else. So it might be that Amazon is simply being held afloat because investors WANT to hold it afloat, not necessarily for any rational reason, not because its a good bussiness, but because they hope it will be someday. Essentailly, by unwriting their below markt book prices, they are artificially subsidizing a bussiness that could have never survived on its own in a real market. That may be a fair gamble, but keep in mind that the money COULD have gone into other things that might be more productive NOW, and when Amazon's time really did come, they could have invested in it then. What's going on isn't about making wise economic decisions now, it's about trying to second guess the future to make money. Just keep that in mind before anyone starts trumpeting this guy's acheivement. All he's done is coninced investors that he's a good bet- he hasn't proven that he is yet. I could start Videomania.com and sell video games at super reduced prices and be very popular, but that wouldn't make me worth artificaly supporting.
The correct spelling of the title of his book is Mein Kampf, not Mien Kampf.
Also keep inmind that TIME is a complete fluff magazine now- it's essentially like Reader's Digest, except more insiduous. Every three months they have some kooky cover story about Angels. Oh, that's breaking news. And what they did with the recent Columbine article was both journaliztically unethical and downright sickening. I wouldn't trust them to pick Man of Anything, much less of the Century or the Year.
To those criticizing Cmdr. Taco for 'hypocrisy', it helps to have a shred of facts before lighting the flamethrowers..... BTW, the ACs who were most vehement, sure showing your moral courage.
The current book reviews all may point to Fatbrain, but there is also the fact that the large lists of suggested reading all point to amazon.com
Like other readers I'm more willing to accept a simple oversight rather than hypocracy, but now that it's been pointed out, I'd really like to see it changed.
The man of the year thing has never been a popularity contest exactly, Ayatollah Khomeni (sp??) was man of the year once (real bitchin Brad Holland cover too) as well as a number of other people you might not want to invite for dinner.
It isn't about popularity, it is about influence. Bezos is the single most visible proponent of e-commerce which virtually didn't exist three years ago, and is set to put a big dent in conventional retail this Christmas season.
Sure they are losing money, and they may well tank completely given time, but they(he) have set the paradigm for online business and captured the popular imagination with respect to technology to a greater extent than anyone since Apple, MS, or Netscape.
Man (or Woman, or Thing) of the Year is generally given to the most influential person of the past year, positive or negative. Now, Bezos may be a hyper freak, but he has built up Amazon from the ground up into the Internet's first real Super Store, and proved to most of the brick-and-mortar types that e-commerce could really work. E-commerce, and hence Amazon and Bezos, have really revolutionized the way people think of doing business.
And so what if he's losing money... So was AOHell all those years, and now they're raking in the money hand over fist. As Garry Trudeau once said, "If you're not losing a lot of money, you're not being aggressive enough."
On a personal note, I know it's not what a lot of people here want to hear, but I almost won't shop at any place but Amazon. I've had really bad experiences with Barnes & Noble in the past, and while I haven't given Borders.com much of a try yet, they don't have the selection and variety of Amazon. So far I've been completely satisfied with Amazon's prices and customer service.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
If I recall correctly, they named him the "Most Influential" person of the year, not "Man of the Year".
Why am I not surprised at this?
Seriously what did he really do to deserve this "honor". I wish Time would stop rewarding business skills and commercialism, and start honoring innovation and integrity.
It seems that they just wanted someone to capture the spirit of the digital revolution, and some clueless journalist just picked some ass out of the air, a name that people would recognize.
I know that I am going to get flamed for this but lets try to be fair and mature about it. Good ol Bill "the evil tycoon" Gates donated billions to charity this year. While I dont agree with some of M$'s business tactics, I respect Bill Gates for this.
I think Time should make that "I kiss you guy" guy man of the year, just out of spite.
P.S. Happy Holidays :)
Clearly, Time meant to give the nod to Larry Wall, without whose efforts Amazon would still be working on their first C++ prototype. Not that Amazon has given a thing back to the Perl community...
I have informed them of their accidental error; I'm sure they'll correct it shortly. :)
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Factual correction: Auschwitz, the concentration camp in the Polish city of Oswiecim, was NOT formed in 1939. The first transport of Jews headed for Auschwitz was shipped from Tarnow on July 14, 1940.
While I'm not absolutely certain of this nomination myself, I myself can't think of anyone who would particularly be more deserving of the award for this year, except possibly the Department of Justice. That's a whole group, though, rather than an individual, and most people don't hear as much news about the case as slashdotters do.
This is why TIME would consider naming Hitler for man of the century. World War II has had outstanding impact on the world since it begun, and moreover, continues to to this very day. I doubt anyone (rational) at TIME would say what Hitler did was a good thing. He sure as hell made a lot of news, however. Thus, don't go thinking that TIME is championing Bezos as the pioneer of e-commerce.
-- Stargazer
Bezos claims that other sites should "innovate" and not "copy". What Amazon has done, however, is no different from all of the domain name speculators that have purchased (or reserved) untold thousands of domain names, and are attempting to re-sell them at rediculous prices. This isn't a question of innovation, it's *only* a question of "who got there first," and there's *nothing* innovative about it. I think Bezos would do well to learn the difference between innovation and opportunism.
I was going to moderate your otherwise insightful article up, until I read your reference to "Whitey 'n the Man". I don't care what your racial background it, that's no more appropriate than other racial slurs and I'm tired of seeing it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Uh... You could easily attribute the entire sentence above to the Internet alone, with no direct reference to Amazon/Bezos. Do you compliment the surfer for creating the wave?
Saying that Jeff Bezos brought the information revolution is similar to saying that Bill Gates invented DOS. Both of them simply marketed the idea/product well, that's all. Also, the fact that Jeff is a "cool guy" really should have no bearing on this award.
I personally would not be surprised to learn that Amazon "bought" this award.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No, they shouldn't. Although I don't have first hand information, by all reports Mr. Bezos *is* a man. Furthermore, it would be entirely correct usage to prefer the masculine gender when speaking of a group, or even (as in the case of "Man of the Year") a non-specific exemplar. We are all "man" in the sense of "mankind", and there is nothing the least bit sexist about that.
It would be appropriate for Time to title the award "Woman of the Year" if the recipient of the Man of the Year honor is female, but naming anyone (man or woman) "Person of the Year" is insulting and degrading, and is really no better than "Primate of the Year", "Throbbing Glob of Protoplasm of the Year" or other inanities.
It's about time to squash this "PC" nonsense, and give both Men and Women the recognition they deserve rather than stripping them of their sex to pacify radically twisted whiners.
[flame off - I feel better now...]
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
...Time's PoY means anything? Hell, It's like getting on the cover of a Roling Stone (insert music here), that's published once a year. Duh. I also agree with the prior comments about Time Warner and what CNN has become since then. I'm actually starting to watch local news now, and not just for the entertainment value.
This whole "Man of the Year" thing reminded me of this article that appeared on the Onion this week. Enjoy!
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
Not really certain exactly what you mean by "more profitable" in this case. Even if the profit margin is theoretically higher for OS/apps, it'll all come down to volume eventually, and there is a far higher volume potential in generic online retailing then there is in OS/apps development. Especially considering the advances you can expect to see as far as online sales to international markets. Amazon's market cap is not justified by it's volume presently, but by expectations for what that volume COULD be if Amazon plays it's cards right. There has never been a better chance for one company to take control of such a large share of such a potentially huge market, and this is what drives investors to take the risk. Ultimately, we'll just have to wait and see...
"I don't marshal my words to be quotable" - Captain Sodium, Gigsville...
Shouldn't they change that to "Person of the Year" these days to be politically correct?
Yeah, but isn't that what fucking Rosie O'Donald did when she refused to do any more KMart TV Ads unless they stopped selling guns! It's bullshit. Maybe she's afraid someone will mistake her for a fat goose this Christmas!
So you would say that folks like Jeff Bezos are responsible for Rwanda, Kosovo and/or Chechnaya?
I believe that repressive government actions are rather prominent in all three places, and that they have nothing to do with greed or business.
D
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...that amazon.com is quite a success. No other on-line store has gotten so much publicity and (in)fame. Shame about the idiotic patent, though...
J.
(first?) :
The same wire states that Amazon was loosing millions of dollars while this award was given.
Will somebody PLEASE inform the American wetback that it is spelled "losing", not "loosing".
This misspelling occurs with such frequency that you'd swear they were teaching it that way in school.
Then I would just ask you, if there is no sexism, then how come there's never been a "woman of the year"?
yeah you fuckers. moderate down!!!
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69th post
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amazon blows
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No comment at this time
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are they asleep?
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I sent them a nice email telling them that I will not use Amazon until they give up this silly patent stuff. Here is their response.
Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.
The patent system is designed to encourage innovation, and we spent thousands of hours developing our 1-Click® shopping feature. This feature securely stores billing and shipping information so that returning customers need only click their mouse once, without re-entering or re-confirming that information, to purchase selected items conveniently.
In recognition of the innovative and unique nature of the 1-Click® technology, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Patent No. 5,960,411 to Amazon.com on September 28, 1999.
We're pleased that the court recognized the innovation underlying our 1-Click® feature by granting a preliminary injunction barring barnesandnoble.com from using it while our suit is pending.
I hope you'll understand that we are unable to discuss this case any further as we are currently in litigation. Thank you for taking the time to share your views with us.
Best regards,
Erik J. Macki
Happy Holidays from Amazon.com
Earth's Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
==============================
BTW, I read somewhere that Amazon is going to post a profit this quarter. I don't remember which of the free trade rags said this. But, it wasn't a rumor. We'll see if this is correct from the Q4 posting.
KZ Auschwitz was (and is) in Poland so it was built later. KZ Dachau was in the village of the same name on the edge of Munich and had existed for years before 1939.
I suppose you could say that it was justified in the sense that he did have a huge influence on world affairs. How often did FDR (comparison: influence, nothing more) get it?
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Peuuuuuh.
I disagree. What would you do differently in their shoes? It's easy to criticize something, it's alot harder to come up with a better solution.
This isn't really that accurate. Right now most net stocks are 50% off their 52 week highs. If it was last April when all the stocks were high flying, I would agree with you. Amazon, funny enoug, is only about 20% off its 52 week high.
Really, this is the year (smart) people realized net stocks were not a sound investment because the price of competition is low and will drive profit margins down.
This is more likely the year of hardware providers, the only people actually making money on the internet.
Way back when Taco started with the Amazon links, it was just so he could get free books and music, which was just fine considering he was a starving student. Of course, now we can safely assume he's RICH, with no fiscal reason whatsoever to keep the Amazon links, and he's had since RMS's announcement to remove them.
Personally, I don't blindly subscribe to whatever RMS yowls about. I don't appreciate Amazon's patent, but B&N and every other megacorp chain are further entrenched and WORSE than Amazon IMO.
What bothers me is the gross and blatant hypocrisy of Taco to make such a statement while he continues to lead people to Amazon through his own high-traffic site.
--
#19845
When Jeff went to expand into electronics and all that other stuff, some of us here on ./ wondered if he wasn't getting Bill Gates-itis. Here in the last few weeks those same people have been proven right with the Barnes and Noble fiasco.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Time Warner is an organization which is about the kind of power that Bill Gates wields, only more subtly and more pervasively.... the same kind of power that Jeff Bezos aspires to. Time Warner, if you remember, was the one who, seeing Ted Turner as a threat to their empire, simply bought him out.... and turned CNN from the best damn news outfit on the planet into just yet another media shill for Big Brother.
And now they promote Jeff Bezos, a man who turned out to be one of their own. No, I don't think he's on a par with Hitler; neither is Bill Gates, for that matter. I do think, however, that both men engage in some extremely slimy business practices, beyond illegal and into the just plain ethically wrong, and that both men's empires deserve to be brought low, if not by the courts, then by the power of the people voting with their feet.
There are alternatives, folks. Use'em.
Taco, put your money where your mouth is. Get rid of the Amazon box. (does the damn thing REALLY generate that much revenue?) And tell Jeff why. This madness has got to stop, here, now, and by our hands. If not now, when? If not us, who?
Delenda est Amazon.
I think a lot of people will disagree with you that the '1-click' patent is a minor issue. I certainly do. It's idiotic to actually believe it's morally right to be able to patent software. Copyright, well that's argueable. Patent? Be serious. To actually sue another company for infringement is even more despicable.
this is haiku
hitler good
he invent peoples car
hate joel klien
foolish kike
microsoft is good
actually, I believe the "small GIF formatted graphic using the word 'Go' in a sans serif font" is a trademarked logo, not a patent.
--
I'm sure the ghost of Dr. Porsche is rolling in his grave right now.
i post comment
crazy reply
you smoking crack?
hitler good
invent VW
i like my Bug
Dr. Porsche
who's he?
i like Hitler
argue about speling
stopid fools
howz this?
Wow, Think about the whole picture first before you becom a hater. There are to many hater's in this world. Jeff has created an online catalog with millions and millions of product that can be easily searched, researched, reviewed, and purchased, from you home. Considering the history of the world, YES Amazon.com is pretty damn amazing. I personaly don't care for time magazine, and would have to agree that they are cashing in on the tech hype. "Man of the year" is just a phrase that doesn't mean to much to me, but I do think that Jeff has done some pretty amazing stuff.
You are being very conservative in your $10 per customer estimate.
The industry standard average cost of getting a customer to actually by their first item was $250 the last time I looked up the figure.
I sure as hell wish I could get people to just walk in my front door for only $10.
Hell, might be cheaper to just hand out ten spots to everyone who comes in.
>TIME is a complete fluff magazine now- it's essentially like Reader's Digest
No, TIME is not what it once was. But then, neither is Reader's Digest. It is still a race for ultimate blandness, and the rubes from Pleasantville still lead the New Yorkers by a considerable margin.
I still cannot believe how many people use loosing wrongly on slashdot. *sigh*.
I refuse to use the word e-commerce Amazon remains the gold standard for an e-commerce site 1999 certainly is the explosion of "e-commerce."
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Actually, looking at the agreement in the books section, it appears to be nothing more than an amazon.com associates agreement. The amazon.com associates terms and conditions includes the following line in section 11:
Either you or we may terminate this Agreement at any time, with or without cause, by giving the other party written notice of termination.
So slashdot is under no obligation to continue to supplying links to amazon.com.
Well, I see alot of negitive comments, not just about Time's choice for 'Man of the year', but about the whole 'Man of the year' proccess.
Why don't we have our own 'Man of the year' thread here on Slashdot? Set it up the same way interview questions are set up. And change the name to someting a bit more gender neutral while we're at it.
The only rule I can think of is the canidate must be currently alive. Oh, and lets also have 2nd and third place too!
This could be cool.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Well, if you havn't noticed.. jeff is working on a NEW VENTURE. They plan on re-inventing just-in-time inventory systems.
The competition, Brainsandneurons.com is heating up though.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I don't get it. Aren't there a lot of SUCCESSFUL e-commerce ventures? Last time I checked, Amazon was still deep in the red. How this was an easy decision, I don't know. Wait, yes I do. It's a bunch of half-assed "journalists" at TIME.
I no longer shop at Amazon because they are cowards. They gave in to pressure from the American Family Association (Read: right-wing extortionists) and pulled their advertising from the Howard Stern Show several months ago. They also apparently treat 90% of their employees like dirt. Must be nice making near-minimum wage for the "company of the year"......
Patents might be a free source of ideas, but you definitely can't use the ideas for your own benifit -- well, you can, but you'll likely have to pay a rather large sum of money to the patent holder. And if you happen to be a competitor of the patent holder, that sum of money might just be more than you can afford...
I notice your URL and email indicate Cuba, so you might not have to face the same reality that those of us in the US and Canada (I believe) do. Or does the US have an agreement of some sort with Cuba?
It's really a shame that the patent system is so messed up (abused?). I'm a CS student in Canada, and am just starting to realize how much potential there is for getting screwed by the big companies (who have the $$ to manipulate the system -- I'm getting by on student loans right now). I wish I knew more about this stuff, so I could avoid litigation later in life.
"The two depend on each other."
I hate to say this, but that just doesn't make sense to me. amazon.com is, as far as I know, not deploying its own army, nor is it attempting to influence our government to fight. Furthermore, I see absolutely no reason why it would want to do either of those things.
I think the great untold story of the late 20th century is how money replaced war as a way of keeping score. Germany is no longer attacking its neighbors; it's building Mercedes-Benz cars instead. Japan is not bombing Pearl Harbour; it's sending us cars and consumer electronics. And the countries resorting to military force are the ones behind, not the ones ahead.
I would concede that we sometimes have wars over things such as oil supplies and the like, but compared to the "good old days" where men were men, women were women, and terrifying percentages of us died, I rather like our current world.
D
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'The National League of Junior Cotillions has named Bill Gates the "best-mannered" person of 1999, citing "his example of generosity and humility."'
check out this blurb for a little more.
Whoever the National League of Junior Cotillions is.
Juln
I recently priced a series of papaerbacks for a gift for a friend, and shipping from any of the online bookstores would have been about 20% of the total price in the end, which wasn't okay at all. If any store in town had them, I would have gladly driven over, bought them the same day, and paid no shipping other than my own transportation.
Juln
Totally offtopic but just clarifing something:
.nl (As does mine) It's holland or the NetherLands. They're a bunch of guys interested in smoking weed and hacking the phonesystem. Nothing too interesting. (IMHO of course) ;-)
Actually The CUBA part is just something these guys are toying with.As you can see their URL ends in
Follow the link if you want to, it's all in english (Most of it anyway)
_ Light travels faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.... -
Nope. Just interviewed with them recently, and HR told me their investors are upset about them NOT making a profit, and have asked them to start doing so. They asked them this within the last 2 months.
fuck CmdrTaco. He's still engaged in a cynical relationship with the ad banner fuckers that embed cookies in their images so they can track us all over the internet. CmdrTaco doesn't have a problem with this because it fattens his fucking problems. I'm tired of his trite platitudes. He's nothing more than a bald headed bastard. Fuck him, Roblimo, Hemos, Cliff....heck fuck em all.
Man, that felt good.
Amazon started off as an online bookstore. It has become much more than that. I go there to buy everything. Books, software, music, games, etc. Jeff Bezos is a genius and should be lauded as such. Jealousy will not hide that fact. The green monster can be a bitch.
you're one of those people who can't see the forest for the trees, huh?
When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a "hands-off" promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the Year.
-Time Magazine, Jan 2, 1939.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
Seriously -- what did he do that was so inovative/important/interesting? He runs a bookstore, people! Sure, he sells the books differently, and some other bookstores now do the same thing (B&N, Fatbrain, Chapters, the corner bookstore,
My Economics prof told us a story the other day that was interesting. I'll probably mess up the numbers/terminology a bit, but the essence is the same: Does anyone have info to support, refute or elaborate on this?
Thought that was interesting.
Actually it was in 1939. Time's "Man of the Year" is NOT "Best Man of the Year". It's supposed to showcase the most influential person of that year. If you look back at 1939, it was most certainly Hitler's year.
Amazon.com sells books. So as long as they keep doing a good job, carrying a wide selection, and offering me arms and legs of retail price, I will continue to be a customer. To not support them because of a petty patent squabble is the real disgrace, in my eyes.
They definitely /are/ cheaper. They were charging $14 for the hardcover edition of The Power Broker by Robert Caro - while everyone else was at around $28-35.
On the other hand, I really love the amazon shopping ambiance, with the great customer reviews and so on. It's hard to duplicate that on another site.
Personally, I think the amazon.com one-click suit is (perhaps even somewhat justified) revenge against B&N's suit over "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" slogan. Because of that prior suit I frankly find it a bit hard to get upset at amazon.
D
----
Give Amazon enough time, and they'll probably try to patent this as well
/. uses moderation. hmmm....
Not if someone beets him to the punch.
Unfortunately, stores like Stacey's are getting increasingly rare in the age of the online bookstore and the "book superstore" as exemplified by Barnes & Noble. Between Amazon.com, bn.com and Borders.com, they have pretty much wiped out the small independent bookseller in a large fraction of this country. I'm not even sure if Stacey's can even survive with the online plus "book superstore" onslaught of the last four years.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
On the other hand, amazon puts up a really interesting cross-reference service. Sure its full of hype, but its still useful to me.
I thought it kind of strange to whine about the one-click patent in the same breath as noting that amazon is still losing money. A patent for one-click was awarded to amazon, and amazon is trying to use that patent for exactly the purpose that patents were designed for, presumably in hopes of slowing down that leak, and maybe someday becoming profitable.
The idea that they got such a patent in the first place is the part that is seemingly absurd. Why do you guys want to swat wasps one at a time instead of going after the nest: the US legal and patent systems?
Amazon is nothing more than a web interface to an inventory control system, that may be spread over numerous warehouses.
Well, that with a billing/shipping function, and a bit of marketing.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
To play devil's advocate a bit about the patent situation...
Isn't it part of being in big business to do whatever you can to ensure your market share? I mean if the patent office is willing to give amazon a patent for one click shopping then more power to amazon for thinking of it! If you disagree with this being a patentable idea then blame the patent office not amazon...
Josh
...therefore, if you dislike Amazon, the most damaging thing you could do is buy A LOT of books from them. In fact, RMS's call for a boycott really ends up saving amazon.com money.
This is still off-topic, but I feel compelled to try and clear this up some...Hitler got MOTY because they thought he was a great leader, not just because he was influential. This sounds ridiculous, but consider the situation.
First off, one of the problems throughout the war was that virtually no one actually read his book, Mein Kampf--and you'd know why if you ever tried (I did back in HS German...entirely aside from the content, it's a terribly written book: dry, boring, and rambling). Second, he did have an (apparently) good effect on Germany. The trains ran on time, crime dropped to negligible amounts, the ludicrous amounts of inflation were throttled way back, etc.
Add to this the fact that people didn't want to believe anything different (remember appeasement?) because the world was very tired of war, and it's easy to see how a magazine could give the award to Hitler. Really, even after the Final Solution was in place, and the knowledge of the horrors of concentration camps was "public," people still didn't really believe it. It wasn't until very late in the war that photographs were leaked, and they literally stunned the world. AFAIK, most American GI's liberating the camps didn't believe what he was doing until they saw it.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Can someone put up a fsck Amazon counter on a page somewhere?
I'll bet that anyone reading this thread would click through to register a hit.
It would be interesting to see how many people share the same thought, without requiring actual text to be typed by those (dis)interested.
Paul
.
Bezos is an e-commerce symbol, nothing more nothing less.
and I'd say that's having a tiny impact on todays society.
Pork is not a verb
First off, Time has name some real twerps as "Man of the Year", such as Newt Gingrich not so long ago. He served his wife divorce papers when she was dying in the hospital of ovarian cancer. Nice guy right?
As for CmdrTaco, I challenge thee in asking whether you have stopped banner ads on Slashdot because DoubleClick has tried to patent online advertisng. Boycotts of stores with sufficient reason are warranted, and although it is obviously a person decision, I haven't stopped buying from amazon just because their lawyers did something stupid.
Bezos is an innovator and a smart businessman. I'd agree that he might deserve the award this year, seeing as ecommerce sales have tripled this holiday season.
Lastly, the New York Times Sunday 12/19 edition (today) in the Business section has a very interesting piece on why ecommerce players like amazon and eToys lose money on every order.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
On the other hand, Amazon doesn't have it anywhere near as well - it might be in the limelight now, but it's so easy to type "barnesandnoble.com" or "booksamillion.com" instead of "amazon.com". That in itself could represent a real threat, and as such, it would be in Amazon's best interest to be a good citizen. Amazon may have brand recognition, but because it's so easy to switch (and the products among booksellers are identical), I'm not sure it means as much as it once did. We'll see how much Amazon's patent is really worth once people figure out that clicking one or two more times to order something isn't that big a deal.
Amazon is losing money hand over fist. Why not nominate a company or founder who has done this, and done it successfully?
Oh, WW Grainger comes to mind. They're MRO (maintenance, repair, operations) and actually turn a healthy profit. P/E of 20, buy lots of stock, so I can sell mine for millions.
Or OfficeMax. Or even Quill Office Supply. Or WalMart. Anybody but Bezos, who has taken a winning strategy and turned it into a money pit.
Man, his company is never going to make money. He would have to capture 3 times the entire bookselling market to just break even. To even out his P/E 0f 1300, he'd have to capture 20 times the market.
Someone is on Prozac, and it ain't me. Bezos reminds me of the guy who sold Time and Newsweek on the Dale automobile. You don't remember that high flier, and 10 years from now, you won't remember Amazon.
Amazon, B&N, Borders and the ilk really overcharge for computer books. My guess is that they try to make up for their discounts on other items by gouging the techie sector. After all, we collectively tend to love our books.
Go to bookpool.com and buy your nerd books. They have DEEP discounts. Like I got the boxed set of Knuth's "Art of Programming" for $45.00 less than Amazon charges.
Some guy named Chris
From Eleanor? Pretty rarely, I'd imagine. Though there may have been an intern or two under the desk. }:-0>
I'd think there are better people deserving of this honor.
Here's my suggestions:
Joel Klein, DOJ: Shredded MS witnesses into little babbling vegetables. Pretty much won the DOJ case against MS, which is really one of the biggest deals in the past 3 years.
Linus: C'mon. RHAT, LNUX, all the anit-MS out there? Sure, I'm being a bit biased, but you've seen more news generated about Linux than Amazon this year.
Alan Greenspan: The real man behind the incredible economy for the year (BTW, he was A&E's Biography of the year)
Someone else nominated the head of NASA, and I must agree. Their "cheaper, better, faster" may take a few years to really pay off, and they may take a few PR hits along the way, but it's better than doing nothing.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Now, who's being Adolf? You just equated bad service at a book store with a concentration camp. I think you ought to apologize to everyone for that. A lot of good people were killed in concentration camps, and you just spit on their graves.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
No, I don't work there or have any connection with them, other than being a regular customer.
True, we all die eventually.
But a lot fewer of us die in wars, and I think that's an uncontestably Good Thing.
D
----
One could easily claim that the most significant events in the twentieth century have revolved around German expansionism, and other nation's attempts to stop that expansionism.
Let's look at the most signficant events in the twentieth century and relate them to Germany:
Really, it seems quite obvious that Hitler should be considered the man of the century, for the shere influence Germany has had on this century, even if it was mostly a destructive and often evil influence.
Everyone is upset with Amazon about the patent; and they feel like boycotting the company will send their message across. But with Amazon loosing money with each transaction, wouldn't it make more sense to try and buy as many of their best deal books as possible.
On the otherhand, greater losses seem to boost their stock price, so mabee this isn't such a great idea after all.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I don't think it's just Slashdot. I think there's some kind of engineering gene that makes people incapable of spelling 'losing' without adding that second 'o'. The more technical a site is, the less likely you are to find a correct spelling of losing. I've been wondering when some recovering humanities major like myself would notice this tendency in Internet documents.
AFAIK, most American GI's liberating the camps didn't believe what he was doing until they saw it.
Small nitpicking, being myself german, sad as it is, it wasn't him, there were many people doing helping him and perhaps making the situation for jews even worse than his orders were (not that I think he would have had anything against that, he just didn't do all "details" himself).
yeah the interface is still a little primitive, but yahoo does a pretty good job of getting a list of vendors who sell the book/cd/whatever you are looking for, and letting you pick the one you want to buy it from.
The agreement that Slashdot has with Amazon is most likely the very non-binding Associates program. You put links to their wares from your site, and when people select those by clicking through from your site, they get a kickback on those items. You can end your association program by simply removing the links from your pages. I'm willing to give people a poke and a chance before using the "H" word. I know how easy it is to have twelve things going at once and simply FORGET one of them. May I suggest that those in command here choose the Associates program from Borders, or another company they don't have a beef with.
Actually, I just checked in the book section and noticed that many of the books have links to fatbrain. I think they were originally amazon links. Nice.
This came to mind.
Click here!
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
not that people aren't benefiting from it, but come on, this ploy has been used by indistrialists to curry favor with the general public for decades.
No, Amazon does no shipping. UPS and FedEx cover that. As for billing, Visa and Matercard handle that. Marketing of course, but they seem to do very little of that - they seem to (wisely) be going with word of mouth.
and I'd say that's having a tiny impact on todays society.
As would I. In retrospect, I'm not terribly surprised that some e-commerce/Internet/Web guy got it. But, you're right - in the grand scheme of things, e-commerce hasn;t changed a whole lot of anything.
Choosing someone who made a lot of money is nicely symbolic, I think. In the first part of the century, our world was defined by war. As the 20th century comes to a close, it's defined by money.
I have to say, I think the latter is better, don't you?
Personally, I don't see much of a difference. The two depend on eachother.
Michael Chisari
Having just been exposed to Amazon's slovenly publicity stunts, I ponder how best to express my disgust at Amazon's total lack of sensitivity and reasoning. Here's my side of the story: Amazon's cronies can be stereotyped as unstable tools of prepackaged political ideology and temperamental calumniators to boot. Amazon has a driving need to make higher education accessible only to those in the higher echelons of society. You might contend I'm telling you this because I like to beat up on it. Really, that isn't my principal reason. I don't especially need to beat up on Amazon because it is already despised by decent and knowledgeable people almost everywhere. It is grossly misleading merely to claim that the documentation of this matter is abundant and conclusive. If I have characterized Amazon's lackeys up to now as obstreperous and disgusting, it is only because it is appalling to me that Amazon has managed to combine, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable gift for lying. There are situations where certain beliefs are appropriate and there are situations where they are not. Amazon's maudlin, kissy-pooh, feel-good, touchy-feely imprecations are actually quite anal-retentive when you look at them a bit closer. Amazon's harangues epitomize neopaganism in its truest form. Having said that, let me add that Amazon's argument that all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders" is hopelessly flawed and utterly circuitous. I would like to end on a heartfelt note. Without checks and balances, paltry ratbags are free to befuddle the public and make sin seem like merely a sophisticated fashion.
He's demonstrated to an extreme degree how much the economy revolves on faith. In his case, faith that he can eventually establish a profitable business model before enough debt piles up to create the Black Hole of Bankruptcy.
It also shows how quickly an entrepreneur can rise in a young industry -- online mail-order -- to become a household name, and how quickly it can impact brick-and-mortar operations. Already, there are debates about sales taxes, whether local bookstores can compete, about the alliances between distributors and retailers...
And yes, one might as well highlight the absurdity. What better candidate than Mr. Bezos?
If it were just about building up $, then Mr. Gates would probably lead (in pure $; not necessarily *relative* gains 'tho).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You are right that aquiring market share is important. Unfortunately for Amazon, their isn't much brand loyalty on the internet, only trust.
This come at two different levels. Trust that any internet purchase will be safe and trust in the vendor you are purchasing from. If one trusts the process, it becomes easier for them to make purchases from alternate vendors.
In the end, Amazon will be a failed company 5 years out because Border's and B&N will leverage their retail stores to reduce shipping costs and maintain a pooled inventory.
If Amazon does not have a book available for immediate shipment, they will lose the sale. New tactics, such as asserting every title is available immediately, will only work for a short time.
In other words, this nomination is a mixed blessing, at best.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
you have to admit, this is incredibly accurate of time. ok, so amazon has not made a single dollar since they were formed. so what? their stock is doing quite well, and that's the real story of the year economically -- stock doing exceptionally well in the tech and dot-com area with companies that have yet to turn a profit. look at redhat, akimai, VA Linux... none of them have done well yet, though their stocks are doing very, very well.
secondly, this whole absurdity in the lawsuit over the one-click-shopping patent is indeed also a milestone in american history. in a world where arbitrary patents can be given out (cf. the two guys who have a patent on using a laser pointer to amuse a cat), this is utterly symbolic of how absurd the whole mess has become. a small GIF formatted graphic using the word 'Go' in a sans serif font... what a load of horsepucky.
so, the next time you say, "oh, what a crock", think about what amazon is all about, and then take a look at the larger economic and tech world this past year, and you'll see that they are indeed leaders in that arena.
jose nazario jose@biocserver.cwru.edu
A recent UserFriendly Sunday strip that tackles amazon.com's Bezos:
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99oct/19991024.html
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
CmdrTaco has stopped shopping at Amazon personally, yet still promotes buying books there in the books section.. Hmmm :)
Time magazine selects a guy who creates a online business man of the year.. simply because it was "e-commerce"?! Tell me, if another company had gone IPO this year and been valued more than amazon.com would they have been a contender? No. Case in point: VA Research IPO. Of course, they're not the hip and trendy "e-commerce".. oh well then, right? Hrmph. I was so looking forward to finding out who man of the century would be... but maybe that anticipation was misplaced - Time magazine is just cashing in on the hype and popularity. Whoever's the most popular in the polls is gonna be the winner, which will be completely independent of who had the most influence on modern day living.
My vote for who should have been man of the year: The head of NASA. Trying to keep people interested in space exploration, trying to push the envelope by making more out of less. Dealing with politicians more concerned about tax breaks for their district than the exploration of the final frontier. God, it's enough to make me cry. Hell, the entire NASA team should have gotten an award - "company of the decade" or something.
"The wake-up call was reading that
Web use was growing 2,300 percent a
year."
(People Weekly)
"I've always been at the
intersection of computers and
whatever they can revolutionize."
(Business Week)
"Our job is to make sure our
service, in every dimension, is better
than everybody else's."
(Nation's Business)
"Brand names are more important
online than they are in the physical
world."
(Inc.)
"We aren't interested in anyone's
trade secrets. But we are very
interested in hiring talented people."
(The San Francisco Chronicle)
(Editors note: this last one is laughable, considering the 'one click' pattent fiasco)
"Work hard, have fun, make
history."
(USA Today)
_____________________________________
Oh please. The holocaust has been franchised more than McDonald's. If I see one more tearjerker movie about the holocaust I'm going to fucking shoot someone. Jews wonder why they're the most hated people on earth. They just finished squeezing the German companies and people of several billion dollars. What the fuck is that all about? The holocaust comes down to a few bucks? I guess for the money loving jew, it does. They will be destroyed eventually.
I'm not saying Time. was unaware of what Hitler was up to-- nor that the folks at Amazon are Nazis-- only that it's a dubious honor to be Time's Man of the Year.
Also, I'm clearly way off topic now. Very sorry.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
If its respect he wants, then donating to charity is something i will praise him for. Who cares what his motives are, respect or not.. its a good thing what he did.
C'mon now, who really reads this rag unless you're sitting on the pooper?
We have a patented one-click technology too.
Listen - I work tech support at Amazon.com, and though I don't necessarily agree with all of the bullshit that is spewed out from the all-knowing corporate mouth, remember that Jeff Bezos is NOT Amazon.com. The gurus in legal have as much or more to do with any patent stupidity as Jeff, and Amazon's official take, even when spiced up with a few of Jeff's words, is brought to you by the grace of a PR department, just as in any other large scale corporation.
Personally, I find the whole idea of a "man of the year" to be basically moronic, but, having met Jeff, I don't see why he doesn't fit the bill as well as anyone else. Whether or not you agree with his business practices, they have achieved a very high profile state due both to how unusual they are and just plain old media hype. Personally, Jeff was VERY cool, super-intelligent, and not at all holier-than-thou. He has an active sense of humor, and is really interested in pretty much anything (not just money, eh?), including obscure technical stuff like public key encryption and the relative benefits of IMAP vs. POP mail configuration. And before you go off about how unprofitable Amazon.com is, take a look at the borg factor: How much of that unprofitability is due to infrastructure overhead & direct business expenses, and how much is due to rapid expansion and business acquisition. Relative to what things'll be like 10 years from now, it's a hysterically open field, full of opportunities that are only going to do a corporation any good if they are acted upong NOW, not later when the pie has been fully divvied up and eaten. Do I philosophically agree with big corporation money gobbling madness? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Too much focus of power in a small group of individuals opens the door for major uncoolness, but conversely makes it possible to achieve some truly excellent things. How long is your wait time when you call Amazon customer service? Did the right item appear at the right address on time in good condition? Probable answers: Very short, and yes. Can other companies STILL promise delivery before Christmas? Definite answer: No.
Aye, I know, this grows lengthy. In short, all I'm trying to say is:
A: Amazon may or may not succeed in the long run, but no other competing company is even close in terms of foreseeable potential. Of course it's a gamble. It's a volatile market in unexplored business territory. The payoff, however, stands to be huge.
B: No, Amazon is not built entirely on ideals of co-prosperity and friendship between competitors. Yes, Amazon is capable of exerting muscle in questionable ways to consolidate it's hold on online retailing. Is this worse than what other companies in it's position would do? Almost certainly not. Amazon.com is exciting, it's cool, it's a great place to work (they put up with my bullshit, right?), but it IS a megagoliath money hungry corporation, with all that entails. Get real, don't expect Mother Theresa.
C: Jeff Bezos is cool. If you ever met him, you'd probably be much more zen about having him as (I still think the very concept is stupid) Time Magazine's man of the year.
Please forgive length of message. Brain eaten by moths.
"I don't marshal my words to be quotable" - Captain Sodium, Gigsville...
you lose.
Moderate the parent of this post up...
I can count the amount of times I have been impressed by the contents of a post in the last month I have been reading Slashdot: 0. Until today.
This is one of the most intelligent, insightful and heartfelt posts I have ever read on Slashdot. Why the fsck are people making B&N out to be angels... remember You've Got Mail (Tom Hanks movie)...that was B&N being caricatured...is that who the Slashdot community loves? Why the fsck are people screaming boycott Amazon without mentioning viable alternatives? Where am I going to buy my books & CDs with the cost and service of B&N without supporting some other fscked corporate body? Where is all this indignation when corporations are killing freedom fighters?
PS: For all the people who keep posting their canned responses from Amazon from Erik Majick (sp?) and those who can't wait to tell us they are boycotting Amazon... please stop it's been done dozens of times already on Slashdot... please read this post and purchase a clue.
Bad Command Or File Name
Choosing someone who made a lot of money is nicely symbolic, I think. In the first part of the century, our world was defined by war. As the 20th century comes to a close, it's defined by money.
I have to say, I think the latter is better, don't you?
D
----
There are many other competent inventory managers out there as well, with many more warehouses distributed closer to you than Amazon. Wal-mart and K-Mart are but two examples.
People need to remember that the most cost-intensive aspect of Amazon's operations have nothing to do with the website, but instead relate to the very difficult problem of maintaining a inventory management system and a system of warehouses. How much product do you keep on hand? How do you deal with demand spikes? How do you distribute materials to local warehouses in a way that anticipates consumer demand?
You have to ask yourself if in the long term Amazon is the best player in the inventory control space, as soon each inventory manager will have a competent website.
If you live in Silly Valley, you have no excuse to not shop at an independent local bookstore -- Stacey's has treated me right since I've been here. Their San Francisco store delivers downtown, too.
(Aside: Funny how startups look more and more like Ponzi schemes as time goes on, innit?)
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Rob,
You might have concerns about Amazon.com's "one click checkout" patent, but personally, what Amazon.com has done is essentially validate the concept of electronic retailing over the Internet.
They have pretty close to the largest new book selection of any retailer in the world; the only "mortar and brick" bookstore that can even compete against Amazon.com's selection of new books is Powell's Books in Portland, OR. Mind you, this has a big downside--it has essentially killed off the small independent general bookseller and forced remaining bookstores to either become niche resellers in nature (e.g., Future Fantasy in Palo Alto, CA) or become superstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, and a few others). Here in "Silicon Valley," stores like Printers Inc. are down to one store, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books is gone, and so is Books, Inc.
TIME chose Jeff Bezos as its "Person of the Year" because he is the most visible personality in a sector of the economy that has become very important indeed. Amazon.com's pioneering efforts will have massive repercussions in many parts of the economy for many years to come.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I no longer shop at amazon.com for the same reason. I even sent them an e-mail detailing the reasons why, though I'm sure they don't care. In the meantime I'm encouraging everyone else I know to avoid purchasing from them as well, although it's still perfectly acceptable to take advantage of their on-line book reviews and stuff like that. :-)
Tell me that this is a bad joke! If Jeff Bezos is man of the year, then M$ Gates is God.
Losing money isn't a bad thing if you're an internet company. Here's why. If you start with the assumption of competent leadership, then that money isn't being thrown away-- it's being spent on getting more customers. Now, they have a formula that says the average customer will spend, say, $100 at Amazon over the next 20 years (just a made up figure). So if they spend $10 to get a customer now, they will lose money in the short term, but make money in the long term.
Investors believe this, and while it's unproven, it may be true. Bezos is certainly a pioneer in the area. It is his job to make sure that the company remains unprofitable until the opportune moment. Why?
There's the real paradox in internet stocks. Once you become profitable, you can never go back. They expect you to always be profitable; if you cross back over, your stock plummets. So you better get all your big expenditures out of the way while you still can, and ramp up that customer curve.
This has been MS's worst year by far. Bill gave the most money this year. Hm...
I'm not saying patents on software or concepts are good, or bad. I just don't want to take a stand either way in the matter, since there isn't much information out there about the incident, but there is a whole lot of propaganda.
what have things come to when somebody who does harm as opposed to the past winners of this. even though the prize is only symbolic it shows what the world has come to. how can he win this "prize" over all the much more noteworthy people. he probably had to pay them to get it since nobody else who ever won it would do such a thing. remember who is giving this "award" , time a magazine owned by one of the biggest conglomerates and bastions of greed in the world.
yay lets all be merry, "greed is great"
I recently saw this error on the Louis Vuitton Cup site (and wanted to gag).
Ten years from now when reality replaces the hype and Amazon's stock price sits south of 10 we will wonder how Time could have ever made such a bonehead selection.
Amazon has nothing special, and I can think of several other people who made more news in the internet arena. Even Bill Gates (ugh) deserves the more correctly titled "Newsmaker of the Year award" more than Bezos.
While I generally don't hold "Time Magazine" in very high regard (being barely a step up from the tabloid), this sort of award reinforces my distaste for pop-news, particularly when it has anything to do with technology.
Now, of course Time magazine's strategy is to capitalize from this tech hype, so Bezos is an easy choice. Enough people will buy the magazine just because they envy the new computer-billionaires.
Let us consider Bezos' accomplishments:
1) Generating a huge, moneylosing web site to sell various products over the internet.
2) Convincing thousands of investors to hand over billions of dollars to support it.
3) Generating more baseless 'net-hype than anyone before him.
4) Deciding to do battle against competitors with stupid and obvious patents, rather than with thoughtful, innovative business strategies and by providing more value to their customers.
He's never created any value whatsoever for his stockholders, but he's certainly gotten them to convince others to invest - sounds like a big ponzi scheme to me.
When it's all said and done, it looks like their best engineered, most innovatively created, and best marketed product is..... their stock.
For this, I would suggest bestowing the first "Huckster of the year" award upon Bezos.
I generally don't buy at Amazon simply because I can find lower prices elsewhere. But Amazon does offer one thing... the most comprehensive collection of customer reviews on the net. This is where Amazon really did it right. Sure you can get reviews on deja, but Amazon now has moderation of the reviews, and gives you an average score as well. You can't get that from deja.
If I had mod points you'd be +5'd right now. Nothing like being able to poke fun at "the man of the year" for another 366 days.....
The only way Amazon can survive is to continue to grow. As Bezos said in the article, he wants to start selling electronics and software. But the problem with selling electronics over the internet is that most people aren't sure of exactly what they want before they buy it. I want to walk into a store, compare several models, and then decide what to purchase. Also, I've saved hundreds of dollars making deals with salesman, not something I would be able to do with a web page. I think books are a perfect product to sell over the internet, because you can read the description of a book literally. But unfortunately with most products, you have to take everything said about it with a grain of salt, and you can only rely on your own judgement based on actually seeing it in action.
I think Amazon.com and the men who brought it to IPO glory is old news. Unfortunately the success of the VA Linux IPO is too new to decide if it is new like Amazon.com.
In the end Time's man of the year is exactly that... they will pick a man that appeals to the kind of people that read Time. Do you? I don't. I doubt what Time has to say matters.
Insert history geek commentary: Hitler did not exactly detail the "Final Solution" until considerably later in the game, when he and some of his boys got together at a conference held for that purpose. "Final Solution" was not really part of Mein Kampf; that book was just about afixing blame on someone other than Franz Josef for Germany's blunders and subsequent punishment in WWI. Now, back on topic. A&E picked Alan Greenspan as their Biography of the Year. I also recall Yasir Arafat getting Time's Man O' the Year. And sharing a Nobel Peace Prize. Hey, the goons in the mainstream media have to laud someone. They really think they control what goes on. But an award is so arbitrary and unimpressive, that most people end up exactly where they started: not giving a rat's ass! I'm really surprised that this little news blurb made it on /. anyway. I'm sure that someone will say "Oh, it's the first time a .com businessman (or insert technojargon phrase here) has won such a prestigious award." Yeah, so what? The real award that Bezos has gotten can be seen in his bank account. Time Magazine? PFEH!!!
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Amazon Bookstore Cooperative eventually agreed to settle out of court. The agreement allowed Amazon.com to continue doing business under that name - ABC's primary demand was that they be required to change their name.
(They, by the way, are the ones who sued Amazon.com - not vice versa.)
Sigh, I shouldn't bite, but I will...
Oh please. The holocaust has been franchised more than McDonald's. If I see one more tearjerker movie about the holocaust I'm going to fucking shoot someone.
The Holocaust was arguably the most horrid and detestable period of human history. It chronicled one kind of people attempting to systematically annihilate another kind of people because their power hungry leader needed a scape-goat and the Jews were the best people to paint a bulls-eye on. Maybe I'm sentimental, but that sounds pretty fucking tear-jerking to me.
They just finished squeezing the German companies and people of several billion dollars. What the fuck is that all about? The holocaust comes down to a few bucks?
You're right... it doesn't come down to a few bucks... It comes down to a few million lives. This is a trite cliche, but imagine if your mother died. Pretty bad, huh? Now imagine if your father, sister, brother, and friends were slaughtered. Gosh, that must suck! Now imagine that happening to a few million people.
They will be destroyed eventually.
Ok... So you're a jew-hater. Good for you. Aren't you proud? You get to blame all your problems on people you've never met now!
I'm thinking of setting up a small ecommerce site and thankfully I don't live in the US so I don't need to respect stupid US patents.
Most people miss this, but Amazon is not really re-inventing the bookstore...
They're reinventing the mall...
I don't see how anybody can confuse cuba.xs4all.nl as actually being on the small island nation. The important point it that it is indeed in Europe and in Europe software patents are not legal and all software patents were accidently issued are to be phased out. There is nothing to legally stop me from using 'one click shopping' or any US software patent and not paying for it. Fraunhofer has a US patent and while they can extort US persons, they cannot do so at home! What a mess, i say it is time to permanently close the patent office concept. There is still some merrit in copyrights, but it too is finding itself on skakey ground today. Patents are for real things and copyrights are for the exact text of things. Concepts. software or other mathematical formulas are not patentable.
As to , we have not hacked the phone for years and almost none of us smoke pot, despite the fact it is quite legal to do so. We have probably played a major role in preventing smartcards that are very fraudeprone from making it, and have destroyed any and all attempts at any copyprotection of any sort. That is our political agenda today. "Invent" a copyprotection scheme and it will be broken before market! It has allways been this way and there is no evidence to show differently. In particular, there is a brief explanation why 'digital watermarks' are unworkable. A full technical analysis is also available and convinced Philips to not support any form of copyprotection.
Anyone who thinks we are a bunch of potsmokers and oldtime foonphreaks hasn't looked. As a group, we support the legalisation of all drugs and are against about all US Federal policy, particulary the most injust justice system that imprisons a higher percentage of its people than any government that has ever ruled on this planet.
Some people get all caught up on these Jewish issues or whatever, but thankfully those people are in the minority. This is the way the game is played folks, and whining about it doesn't change things.
Good job Adolf. Keep up the good work.
However, that does not mean that it will be more profitable, and quite unlike the OS and application market, it will tend away from monopoly by its nature, rather than towards it. In the long term, I think it will be extremely difficult for Amazon to justify its market cap, unless it buys, say, a few Bolivian copper mines.
And if you think about these sites, they are strong evidence, that Amazon will never be very proitable - the competition on the net is just too strong (on-topic again!).
things. take. time.
I had to read 3 sentences of that tripe before realizing it was auto-generated. Are the moderators asleep this afternoon, or what?
Hear, hear... I made almost the identical comment in another thread. The 1-click issue is significant, but only to the /. population. Off-line, a patent on software may as well be a patent on thingamagicks...
/. readership, yet here we are arguing over Amazon's bottom line. What would happen if Amazon went under? How many investors would take a second look at their Internet portfolio? How many would pull out of the second- and third-tier dot-coms out there? and whose bottom-line that would hurt? not John Q Public's, but certainly John Slash Dotter's...
What counts is that Bezos/Amazon risked everything to start e-commerce *first*; they made e-shopping accessible to John Q Public, and they helped legitimize the Internet... And I cannot think of any other group of people that has profitted more out of this than the
Give the guy a break...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Whatever happened to their lawsuit with Amazon Bookstore? Last I heard, Amazon was dishing out some pretty bottom-of-the-barrel tactics in dealing with these people...
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http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
I keep losing loose change in the couch.
Well, I suppose this shows us what is currently admired in mainstream America.
:) It's not the government levying the tax. But the point is, this frivolous and undeserved claim will likely be a losing proposition for consumers. As such, I'm not interested in being one of King Jeff's subjects.
But now that he's crowned, perhaps we could compare King Jeff to King George. King Jeff has lately shown he's tempted to use his power for tyranny. By pursuing Amazon's frivolous intellectual property claim, online business outfits will be required pay licensing fees for using cookies to recall customer information (if they'll allow competitors to use it at all). This will essentially tax any online buyer... because, naturally, the businesses in question would have to pass along the cost of doing business. Taxation w/o representation, anyone?
OK, it's a big stretch.
& kudos to you, Rob, for taking your book buying elsewhere and speaking out about it.
(& if this post shows up twice, my apologies...
it didn't seem to take the first time).
Tweet, tweet.
OK, So Bezos gets POTY(Person of the Year) while his company, never having made a profit, is 300 million dollars in the hole for this year. Can I just spend all of my salaray next year and be Person of the Year?
Of course, there is also the fact that POTY has always been about influence, not "likeability". Yeah, Hitler was POTY in the 30's, but the man did have an influence, no doubt about it. Probably were better choices, but I bet Bezos was picked becasue Amazon is famous. It's not like they are gonna pick Redhat's CEO. Most people don't recognize the name. Bezos is an e-commerce symbol, nothing more nothing less.
I read an article about Bezos a few months ago, in I think the New York Times Magazine.
This man managed to turn a little website sitting on a SPARCstation 5 into a multi-national empire in just a matter of 2 or 3 years. Amazon.com was the pioneer for online merchandising (I refuse to use the word e-commerce), and despite for a couple of minor issues (i.e. the '1-click' patent issue, but we won't go down that path here) Amazon remains the gold standard for an e-commerce site.
Amazon.com showed the unwashed masses that they won't get burned by buying things online. In addition, their prices are slightly better than the national book mega-store chains (Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc).
Frankly, I say he deserves the title of "Man of the Year" since 1999 certainly is the explosion of "e-commerce." Sure, there have been minor hiccups in the system (like the whole patent issue). However, things like the automobile, phones, and computers (gasp!) had issues when they were first emerging, and today we take them for granted.