You will have a lot of money saved, if you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison on the hardware.
Also, it's on you to make sure OS updates are installing, the firewall is running, and the antivirus is updated, and running. Also, don't trip over the power cord or you'll destroy the entire laptop. You may be used to this, with the "innovative" new Mac design.
DNS for slashdot points to California, but looks to be registered in Arizona. Their IP address resolved with geolocation in Missouri. Do you know which state their bank account is setup in? How about their legal entity?
These types of things impact a business, because the laws of where they have a physical presence can then be enforced on them. Two examples of this are many states attitudes towards marijuana, and the tendency of large corporations to register in Delaware.
For "freedom of speech" I haven't seen too many differences across the United States, but who is going to enforce this? Who's going to be the internet police? Probably whichever branch of the Federal government is responsible for regulating trade where site owners pull their money out.
Americans can live in different places and still read slashdot, and other people can read slashdot too. According to this (highly valid, scientific, single) report, 45% of slashdot's traffic comes from outside the United States. So, I think specifying which freedom of speech you mean is a reasonable thing, when 45% of the traffic might have a different viewpoints on this.
While in Russia, there was a different metric for free speech than I've seen in the United States. My Thai friends also see differences in Thailand. I see additional differences against conservative viewpoints in Western Europe, and Canada.
Which country are you using as the metric for "Free Speech?" You mention the FDA, so I assume you mean an American viewpoint, but that should likely be explicitly stated, rather than implied.
Windows 10 is pretty terrible. I support Windows 7, 8, and 10 for my parents' office (they are the ONLY people I'll do this kind of system support for.) I 100% agree with you that Windows 10 is horrible for supporting, at all, for all applications, except MAYBE video games.
I use Windows 7, and plan to until it end-of-life's out. You have until 2020 there. I think there is a Windows 8 revision that allows me to turn off all their annoying clippy touch screen crap (8.1?) that I'll try and use after Windows 7 isn't a viable option. I also use a ridiculously expensive Macbook Pro, which only made sense due to numerous iOS development contracts.
I have used Linux as a primary desktop, during the days of Gentoo. I am very, very, very grateful for this terrible experience, since it turned me into a pretty decent Linux system administrator. What I generally do is run Ubuntu inside a VM for all actual work, and use Chrome inside Windows 7, or OS X, for posting to slashdot. If I had no money, I'd run Ubuntu as a primary desktop on junk machines. This would effectively be a time-for-money trade-off.
The nice thing about this is that if someone really wants to make this happen, they can. However, I can think of about 10,000 things I would rather write software for than making Ubuntu more user friendly. I also see basically zero economic reason for any of the big corporate backers to do this either.
Mostly, I have trouble understanding why this is a general goal. I can understand why individuals in certain circumstances would want this, but as a general solution, I still don't understand. If you really want to, you can run Linux as a desktop. For most people, it's not their best option.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would actually want to devote resources to this. Linux is extremely, extremely, extremely awesome for the web applications my company deploys (LAMP, Django, bizarre Java applications.) I don't understand why there would be a push to make Linux into a viable desktop solution, when it is already an extremely viable server solution. It's also extremely viable for phones, and for embedded applications. What, are you going to be running Windows to control your microcontroller?
This to me seems like two things: 1.) A slow news day. 2.) Linux trying to be something that it's not, instead of people appreciating what it is.
Entire categories of errors are simply not present in strongly typed languages, which are present in weakly types languages. The example of PHP is the worst, as this may be a retardedly typed language, but the example still is applicable.
I've also noticed that there is a tendency is for weakly typed languages to be interpreted, while strongly typed languages are compiled. This is another language attribute that moves the bug detection from compile time to run time, and introduces an entire category of run time only bugs which compiled languages do not have.
All of these are reasons that weakly typed languages allow for more bugs, which are detected later. I am not saying that strongly typed compiled languages are better than weakly typed interpreted languages, but they are different.
A crappy programmer with a good type system is not better than a good programmer with a crappy type system. I'm pretty sure this is a paraphrasing of something Donald Knuth must have said...
I'm pretty sure I could build a drone from junk, or otherwise not-registered parts. Just like I could 3D print a (crappy) gun to avoid gun control legislation.
The article did mention that this registration would be a voluntary (for now) registration, which the U.N. would have no force to enforce on it's member states. If it actually worked out that way, great. Register your drone if you want to. Then, officials will know where know when registration becomes confiscation.
If this were me, I'd log everyone requesting WikiLeaks and redirect most of them to the actual WikiLeaks. Then for those that ordered the secret sauce, some of them would see my own custom version of WikiLeaks (which would probably look just like the actual WikiLeaks, except the "upload leak" button would go to me instead.)
This would probably require some tricky DNS configuration, but it looks like BIND supports this. If they lost control of DNS, a bind configuration like that would make it way trickier to detect, and more useful, than a global redirect of "I captured your flag!!!"
This is what happens when everyone that is given a participation trophy grows up. They try and change the use of language to remove the concept of failure.
There are many, many, many, times I failed. I tried to learn something from those failures, usually afterwards, with lots of retrospection, regret, and alcohol, but they were still complete and utter disasters. To call them a "pivot" is silly, even though they all involved major changes after the chips fell. This is both personally, and in terms of decisions I made for my software company.
I apologize - I was only able to make it through the first two paragraphs of this article before I was reminded of why I do not subscribe to the New York Times, and pivoted to writing a comment.
Then build a decentralized search engine. There are many, many, examples of distributed systems - if "we" need to do something, or "one" could argue, I think it's time for "you" to read some academic papers on ring / distributed algorithms, blockchains, byzantine generals, submit papers to academic journals if there is a hole in the academic literature (doubtful), start cranking on code (probable), and start marketing existing solutions (almost certain.)
The DNS hole is why I addressed domain registration with the statement: Register your domain in a country that doesn't care at all, or supports your form of bizarreness.
I think it's a good idea to understand the different links in any system, especially if you're going to rely on it for communicating an important message. I'm not making a point in favor for, or against, refusing service to people (suppression?) but saying that if you ask yourself "Hey, would it be useful for someone to suppress my message?" and the answer is "yes" it might make sense to take some basic precautions. Such as not 100% relying on a otherwhere cloud-magical host that can turn you off immediately.
There are some basic, basic precautions people can take to provide high fidelity web services. Having domain registration with GoDaddy and then running your website through WordPress.com is not what I would consider taking those precautions. There are something like 400 registrars that can be used to register a domain. GoDaddy and Google are two of them. If they don't want your business, someone else will.
That's all I'm saying. I don't really worry too much about the free speech implications, censorship, suppression, moral superiority, terrorism, warm fuzzies, two wrongs making a right, means-ends, ends-means, or basically anything related to that. If you want to keep your website running, don't rely on super entry level technologies, and registration companies that are going to bow to U.S. political pressure at the drop of a hat.
This is a problem with using WordPress.com to host your content. WordPress.com can then decide if it wants to host your content. There is a self hosted version of Wordpress, which is typically referred to WordPress.org, or just "WordPress" by people involved in WordPress development. This "version" of WordPress allows for you to deploy on any server running PHP + MySQL, and doesn't involve making calls back to WordPress.com for the purposes of political correctness (UNLESS you install the JetPack plugin, which bridges many of the helpful features of WordPress.com into WordPress.org.) WordPress.com is a complete service, closer to SquareSpace or Wix. WordPress.org is a CMS, similar to Drupal or Joomla!
Seriously, if you are doing shady stuff, why not protect yourself? Register your domain in a country that doesn't care at all, or supports your form of bizarreness. Then, point the name at a server which you either control, or is really an empty container (AWS EC2?) again preferably hosted in a country that either doesn't care at all, or supports your particular flavor of perversion.
I see this all the time. People either:
1.) Break a law
2.) Are obscenely offensive then get caught/in trouble / kicked offline, and then it's "news." This shouldn't be "news" if they actually thought about what they were doing, and performed the steps I outlined above to prevent this, and also because this isn't news, it's called being dumb and making your host/registrar/provider dislike you. This is "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" but applied in the context of hanging an obscene poster from your poster holder called a website.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would think that a liability with no fixed end, guaranteeing a payout, like a pension or Social Security, would be a good idea. IRA's and 401k's make way, way, way, more financial sense that a pension does. There are countless stories of pension funds running dry, economic conditions changing during the 30+ years of someone drawing on a pension, Social Security getting raided by incompetent politicians, and other reasons that any kind of fixed benefit plan doesn't seem appealing to me. Or anything I should place any faith in.
I would much prefer to decide how much to invest each year, and how to invest it, myself. Then I only have myself to blame if (when?) something goes wrong.
That depends on where you live/are, who they have extradition treaties with, and their willingness to enforce the existing laws/treaties against YOU.
If you're talking about a U.K. security researcher, arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, then I would say yes. If you're talking about a software company based in Ukraine, then I would say no.
We used to have arguments like this all the time at a place I worked. We built scientific software, with the UI written in C++ using Qt. The support, and the hardcore numerical solver, department heads used to have heated debates about button placement. Both had good points, and both's suggestions depended on their perspectives, and the perspective of the user base each represented (with support being more along the engineering, and the solver being more along scientific applications.)
The solution I proposed was to make the widgets dockable, and for a user's preferences to be remembered. We implemented this, and it make the argument far less heated. Instead of "where should an element BE?" it became "where should an element start?" I proposed a set of different defaults, based on science / engineering preferences, but I don't think we started down this path. We did get a cool "export preferences" feature working, so someone wouldn't have to re-dock all their widgets every time they got on a new machine.
This is the same discussion. The same solution applies.
I would prefer Ubuntu / Linux focus more resources on making my software RAID controller suck less, and fewer resources on these kind of trivial points. From a software development perspective, it's way easier to switch the position of a menu than to make my cheap 1990s server BIOS chip work...
Every internship I had was paid, and well paid...? Many were at a National Laboratory, another one was at Honeywell, and then a research assistantship with a professor during graduate school. I was very happy with the compensation, learning opportunities, real actual work, and job offers from all of them. I saved Honeywell a ton of cash rewriting software from a Sun and onto a PC. Them being able to dump the Sun support contracts probably paid for ALL their interns that year...
My experiences were very different than what you described. I'm sorry if your internships weren't as valuable - I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that came from mine, and I try and encourage people to make similar decisions, because I think there were good choices.
This is what happens when developers make business decisions. Seriously, why is Mozilla focused on promoting/using/developing Rust, when they could be focused on making their browser suck less? Probably because they have no business concerns, at all, about making a viable product (or company.) I spent two weeks exclusively using Firefox, right when Google was found to be recording everything I said, in the event I happened to say "OK Google" without a way to turn this off. After two weeks, I realized I'd rather be bugged than use Firefox any longer.
This is exactly what Joel Spolsky wrote about, when Netscape did a complete rewrite here, or in his awesome book Joel on Software . Netscape focused on a rewrite, instead of making their browser suck less.
It sounds like Netscape made this mistake and then became Firefox. Now, it seems like Firefox is making the exact same mistake. This has to be the funniest business case study ever.
This is a super good idea. I was very aggressive towards internships, and it paid off big time. Many of my classmates had higher grades, but couldn't get a full time job after graduation due to their lack of experience (and ambition?)
As a nerdy engineering type, often times the softer skills associated with getting, and keeping, a job are more difficult than the technical aspects of performing that job. I think mandatory internships for all engineering disciplines, at least in my home state, would be a great idea.
Employees, or contractors, of a company with a contract for a different company are not employees of the purchasing company. These people are not Facebook employees. They are Facebook contractors. They may not even be employees of their direct company, if they have a 1099 agreement with them. In California, the term "employee" comes with an especially large amount of legal red tape.
This is seriously like the most basic distinction ever, when running a business. If you do not understand this, and you're providing contract services, no one will take you seriously at all.
I mean, we are talking about Drupal, right? I'm unconvinced that being a sexual deviant is actually a hinderance when it comes to Drupal development. Based on my work with Drupal, it seems like it would be an advantage...?
Why does it matter that it's Amazon? Unless EVERY individual transaction is profitable, across all levels, someone will be "taxed" to pay for someone else's "subsidy." This is extremely obviously clear in the case of (relatively zero-sum) governments, but it's also the case in corporate transactions. If I lose money on a business transaction, that loss needs to be covered (subsidized) by the profitability of another transaction (tax.)
Businesses should be free to decide if they want to lose money on transactions (loss-leaders, market share grab, whatever...) but whenever a government is involved this, it becomes a bit less clear. Still, the Post Office is probably one of the best run Federal agencies, sitting on the least shaky financial ground. I'm inclined to say "Who cares? Let those running the post office decide how to run the Post Office. They're doing a pretty good job."
Slashdot Mirror
You will have a lot of money saved, if you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison on the hardware.
Also, it's on you to make sure OS updates are installing, the firewall is running, and the antivirus is updated, and running. Also, don't trip over the power cord or you'll destroy the entire laptop. You may be used to this, with the "innovative" new Mac design.
I'm happy Apple is taking so many innovative, brave, bold moves. Their emphasis on UI, and animation, is transforming the calculator industry.
DNS for slashdot points to California, but looks to be registered in Arizona. Their IP address resolved with geolocation in Missouri. Do you know which state their bank account is setup in? How about their legal entity?
These types of things impact a business, because the laws of where they have a physical presence can then be enforced on them. Two examples of this are many states attitudes towards marijuana, and the tendency of large corporations to register in Delaware.
For "freedom of speech" I haven't seen too many differences across the United States, but who is going to enforce this? Who's going to be the internet police? Probably whichever branch of the Federal government is responsible for regulating trade where site owners pull their money out.
Americans can live in different places and still read slashdot, and other people can read slashdot too. According to this (highly valid, scientific, single) report, 45% of slashdot's traffic comes from outside the United States. So, I think specifying which freedom of speech you mean is a reasonable thing, when 45% of the traffic might have a different viewpoints on this.
While in Russia, there was a different metric for free speech than I've seen in the United States. My Thai friends also see differences in Thailand. I see additional differences against conservative viewpoints in Western Europe, and Canada.
Which country are you using as the metric for "Free Speech?" You mention the FDA, so I assume you mean an American viewpoint, but that should likely be explicitly stated, rather than implied.
Windows 10 is pretty terrible. I support Windows 7, 8, and 10 for my parents' office (they are the ONLY people I'll do this kind of system support for.) I 100% agree with you that Windows 10 is horrible for supporting, at all, for all applications, except MAYBE video games.
I use Windows 7, and plan to until it end-of-life's out. You have until 2020 there. I think there is a Windows 8 revision that allows me to turn off all their annoying clippy touch screen crap (8.1?) that I'll try and use after Windows 7 isn't a viable option. I also use a ridiculously expensive Macbook Pro, which only made sense due to numerous iOS development contracts.
I have used Linux as a primary desktop, during the days of Gentoo. I am very, very, very grateful for this terrible experience, since it turned me into a pretty decent Linux system administrator. What I generally do is run Ubuntu inside a VM for all actual work, and use Chrome inside Windows 7, or OS X, for posting to slashdot. If I had no money, I'd run Ubuntu as a primary desktop on junk machines. This would effectively be a time-for-money trade-off.
The nice thing about this is that if someone really wants to make this happen, they can. However, I can think of about 10,000 things I would rather write software for than making Ubuntu more user friendly. I also see basically zero economic reason for any of the big corporate backers to do this either.
Mostly, I have trouble understanding why this is a general goal. I can understand why individuals in certain circumstances would want this, but as a general solution, I still don't understand. If you really want to, you can run Linux as a desktop. For most people, it's not their best option.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would actually want to devote resources to this. Linux is extremely, extremely, extremely awesome for the web applications my company deploys (LAMP, Django, bizarre Java applications.) I don't understand why there would be a push to make Linux into a viable desktop solution, when it is already an extremely viable server solution. It's also extremely viable for phones, and for embedded applications. What, are you going to be running Windows to control your microcontroller?
This to me seems like two things:
1.) A slow news day.
2.) Linux trying to be something that it's not, instead of people appreciating what it is.
Yes.
Entire categories of errors are simply not present in strongly typed languages, which are present in weakly types languages. The example of PHP is the worst, as this may be a retardedly typed language, but the example still is applicable.
I've also noticed that there is a tendency is for weakly typed languages to be interpreted, while strongly typed languages are compiled. This is another language attribute that moves the bug detection from compile time to run time, and introduces an entire category of run time only bugs which compiled languages do not have.
All of these are reasons that weakly typed languages allow for more bugs, which are detected later. I am not saying that strongly typed compiled languages are better than weakly typed interpreted languages, but they are different.
A crappy programmer with a good type system is not better than a good programmer with a crappy type system. I'm pretty sure this is a paraphrasing of something Donald Knuth must have said...
Well, it sounds like the only reasonable thing to do would be to provide the National Cybersecurity Centre with much more funding!!
I'm pretty sure I could build a drone from junk, or otherwise not-registered parts. Just like I could 3D print a (crappy) gun to avoid gun control legislation.
I think that governments underestimate the ability of nerds to useless turn junk into somewhat less-useless junk.
The article did mention that this registration would be a voluntary (for now) registration, which the U.N. would have no force to enforce on it's member states. If it actually worked out that way, great. Register your drone if you want to. Then, officials will know where know when registration becomes confiscation.
If this were me, I'd log everyone requesting WikiLeaks and redirect most of them to the actual WikiLeaks. Then for those that ordered the secret sauce, some of them would see my own custom version of WikiLeaks (which would probably look just like the actual WikiLeaks, except the "upload leak" button would go to me instead.)
This would probably require some tricky DNS configuration, but it looks like BIND supports this. If they lost control of DNS, a bind configuration like that would make it way trickier to detect, and more useful, than a global redirect of "I captured your flag!!!"
This is what happens when everyone that is given a participation trophy grows up. They try and change the use of language to remove the concept of failure.
There are many, many, many, times I failed. I tried to learn something from those failures, usually afterwards, with lots of retrospection, regret, and alcohol, but they were still complete and utter disasters. To call them a "pivot" is silly, even though they all involved major changes after the chips fell. This is both personally, and in terms of decisions I made for my software company.
I apologize - I was only able to make it through the first two paragraphs of this article before I was reminded of why I do not subscribe to the New York Times, and pivoted to writing a comment.
Then build a decentralized search engine. There are many, many, examples of distributed systems - if "we" need to do something, or "one" could argue, I think it's time for "you" to read some academic papers on ring / distributed algorithms, blockchains, byzantine generals, submit papers to academic journals if there is a hole in the academic literature (doubtful), start cranking on code (probable), and start marketing existing solutions (almost certain.)
This is why offsite backups, and revision control, is a good idea...
The DNS hole is why I addressed domain registration with the statement:
Register your domain in a country that doesn't care at all, or supports your form of bizarreness.
I think it's a good idea to understand the different links in any system, especially if you're going to rely on it for communicating an important message. I'm not making a point in favor for, or against, refusing service to people (suppression?) but saying that if you ask yourself "Hey, would it be useful for someone to suppress my message?" and the answer is "yes" it might make sense to take some basic precautions. Such as not 100% relying on a otherwhere cloud-magical host that can turn you off immediately.
There are some basic, basic precautions people can take to provide high fidelity web services. Having domain registration with GoDaddy and then running your website through WordPress.com is not what I would consider taking those precautions. There are something like 400 registrars that can be used to register a domain. GoDaddy and Google are two of them. If they don't want your business, someone else will.
That's all I'm saying. I don't really worry too much about the free speech implications, censorship, suppression, moral superiority, terrorism, warm fuzzies, two wrongs making a right, means-ends, ends-means, or basically anything related to that. If you want to keep your website running, don't rely on super entry level technologies, and registration companies that are going to bow to U.S. political pressure at the drop of a hat.
This is a problem with using WordPress.com to host your content. WordPress.com can then decide if it wants to host your content. There is a self hosted version of Wordpress, which is typically referred to WordPress.org, or just "WordPress" by people involved in WordPress development. This "version" of WordPress allows for you to deploy on any server running PHP + MySQL, and doesn't involve making calls back to WordPress.com for the purposes of political correctness (UNLESS you install the JetPack plugin, which bridges many of the helpful features of WordPress.com into WordPress.org.) WordPress.com is a complete service, closer to SquareSpace or Wix. WordPress.org is a CMS, similar to Drupal or Joomla!
Seriously, if you are doing shady stuff, why not protect yourself? Register your domain in a country that doesn't care at all, or supports your form of bizarreness. Then, point the name at a server which you either control, or is really an empty container (AWS EC2?) again preferably hosted in a country that either doesn't care at all, or supports your particular flavor of perversion.
I see this all the time. People either:
1.) Break a law
2.) Are obscenely offensive
then get caught/in trouble / kicked offline, and then it's "news." This shouldn't be "news" if they actually thought about what they were doing, and performed the steps I outlined above to prevent this, and also because this isn't news, it's called being dumb and making your host/registrar/provider dislike you. This is "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" but applied in the context of hanging an obscene poster from your poster holder called a website.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would think that a liability with no fixed end, guaranteeing a payout, like a pension or Social Security, would be a good idea. IRA's and 401k's make way, way, way, more financial sense that a pension does. There are countless stories of pension funds running dry, economic conditions changing during the 30+ years of someone drawing on a pension, Social Security getting raided by incompetent politicians, and other reasons that any kind of fixed benefit plan doesn't seem appealing to me. Or anything I should place any faith in.
I would much prefer to decide how much to invest each year, and how to invest it, myself. Then I only have myself to blame if (when?) something goes wrong.
That depends on where you live/are, who they have extradition treaties with, and their willingness to enforce the existing laws/treaties against YOU.
If you're talking about a U.K. security researcher, arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, then I would say yes. If you're talking about a software company based in Ukraine, then I would say no.
We used to have arguments like this all the time at a place I worked. We built scientific software, with the UI written in C++ using Qt. The support, and the hardcore numerical solver, department heads used to have heated debates about button placement. Both had good points, and both's suggestions depended on their perspectives, and the perspective of the user base each represented (with support being more along the engineering, and the solver being more along scientific applications.)
The solution I proposed was to make the widgets dockable, and for a user's preferences to be remembered. We implemented this, and it make the argument far less heated. Instead of "where should an element BE?" it became "where should an element start?" I proposed a set of different defaults, based on science / engineering preferences, but I don't think we started down this path. We did get a cool "export preferences" feature working, so someone wouldn't have to re-dock all their widgets every time they got on a new machine.
This is the same discussion. The same solution applies.
I would prefer Ubuntu / Linux focus more resources on making my software RAID controller suck less, and fewer resources on these kind of trivial points. From a software development perspective, it's way easier to switch the position of a menu than to make my cheap 1990s server BIOS chip work...
Every internship I had was paid, and well paid...? Many were at a National Laboratory, another one was at Honeywell, and then a research assistantship with a professor during graduate school. I was very happy with the compensation, learning opportunities, real actual work, and job offers from all of them. I saved Honeywell a ton of cash rewriting software from a Sun and onto a PC. Them being able to dump the Sun support contracts probably paid for ALL their interns that year...
My experiences were very different than what you described. I'm sorry if your internships weren't as valuable - I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that came from mine, and I try and encourage people to make similar decisions, because I think there were good choices.
This is what happens when developers make business decisions. Seriously, why is Mozilla focused on promoting/using/developing Rust, when they could be focused on making their browser suck less? Probably because they have no business concerns, at all, about making a viable product (or company.) I spent two weeks exclusively using Firefox, right when Google was found to be recording everything I said, in the event I happened to say "OK Google" without a way to turn this off. After two weeks, I realized I'd rather be bugged than use Firefox any longer.
This is exactly what Joel Spolsky wrote about, when Netscape did a complete rewrite here, or in his awesome book Joel on Software . Netscape focused on a rewrite, instead of making their browser suck less.
It sounds like Netscape made this mistake and then became Firefox. Now, it seems like Firefox is making the exact same mistake. This has to be the funniest business case study ever.
This is a super good idea. I was very aggressive towards internships, and it paid off big time. Many of my classmates had higher grades, but couldn't get a full time job after graduation due to their lack of experience (and ambition?)
As a nerdy engineering type, often times the softer skills associated with getting, and keeping, a job are more difficult than the technical aspects of performing that job. I think mandatory internships for all engineering disciplines, at least in my home state, would be a great idea.
They are likely employees of the company contracting with Facebook, not Facebook employees.
Employees, or contractors, of a company with a contract for a different company are not employees of the purchasing company. These people are not Facebook employees. They are Facebook contractors. They may not even be employees of their direct company, if they have a 1099 agreement with them. In California, the term "employee" comes with an especially large amount of legal red tape.
This is seriously like the most basic distinction ever, when running a business. If you do not understand this, and you're providing contract services, no one will take you seriously at all.
I mean, we are talking about Drupal, right? I'm unconvinced that being a sexual deviant is actually a hinderance when it comes to Drupal development. Based on my work with Drupal, it seems like it would be an advantage...?
Why does it matter that it's Amazon? Unless EVERY individual transaction is profitable, across all levels, someone will be "taxed" to pay for someone else's "subsidy." This is extremely obviously clear in the case of (relatively zero-sum) governments, but it's also the case in corporate transactions. If I lose money on a business transaction, that loss needs to be covered (subsidized) by the profitability of another transaction (tax.)
Businesses should be free to decide if they want to lose money on transactions (loss-leaders, market share grab, whatever...) but whenever a government is involved this, it becomes a bit less clear. Still, the Post Office is probably one of the best run Federal agencies, sitting on the least shaky financial ground. I'm inclined to say "Who cares? Let those running the post office decide how to run the Post Office. They're doing a pretty good job."