Taxes. Whatever costs Amazon has, your local vendor has them too. PLUS, he is REQUIRED to collect those taxes. Amazon doesn't have to collect taxes. No matter what you think of my conjecture, Amazon does indeed have an unfair advantage over a brick and mortar store.
More, let's not forget that Amazon has the same advantage over any local store that WalMart has - volume buying and sales.
Joe Schmuck stocks his shelves with items that he had to pay 10 bucks for - but BOTH WalMart and Amazon can get the same items for about 9 bucks.
In short, if you're interested in starting a business, you can't compete with WalMart OR Amazon.
Precisely. I'm in Rural America - the less developed world - and the BEST that I can get is 1 MB DSL, which I can't afford to pay for. My phone bill is $75/month with the 375k that I do have! Little more than two years ago, I didn't even have access to that - it was 56k dial up, that on a really good day gave me 47k. So, my memory of waiting as much as 5 minutes for a page to load hasn't faded. Many many times, I just decided that I didn't really need to see the page, and canceled it.
Even with my ten-times faster DSL, I cancel pages from time to time. Latency is no better now than when I had dial-up, but once the page begins loading, it really is 10 times better - and simply not good enough.
Designers should be aware, if it takes more than 30 seconds to load your page, I'm just GONE. I'll not reward your incompetence and lack of consideration by browsing your site. WHATEVER you are offering is available elsewhere, and Google can find it for me.
People like myself with extremely limited bandwidth see the difference. When I load a page from wherever, that is loaded with adverts (often enough, flash powered) it might take a full minute to load a page. All that bandwidth wasted, just to read a few lines of text, that should load so fast that I don't actually SEE it loading.
One way to stop all that trash loading is to use your HOSTS file, or some other proxy that filters out the advertising, since most of the advertising doesn't even come from the site you're trying to load.
I know - since much of the world has fiber optics, most site developers simply don't CARE that loading their page takes 3 minutes in the less developed world. Believe me, I don't use their site, if I can't block the garbage.
Corporate headquarters determines that x% of sales are from manufacturers and/or distributing businesses within 100 miles of some town in New Jersey - where one of their major suppliers happens to have a factory. Corporate purchases a warehouse very close to the supplier - next door, if possible. That particular supplier's shipping is now just about zero. The shipping from all those other suppliers within ~100 miles is now reduced to some negligible amount, compared to shipping somewhere like Los Angeles.
Taking this idea a step further, Amazon could rent an office in an individual supplier's plant, put an employee in that office, and make orders for whatever quantity of sales they make each week, to be "delivered" to the employee within the plant. That employee then packages and mails off each individual order.
Going even further, Amazon could easily negotiate a contract with individual manufacturers and suppliers, whereby Amazon is only a middle man. Amazon makes the sale, enters the shipping information from a terminal anywhere in the world, and the manufacturer ships the item directly to the customer.
In this day and age, I'd be terribly surprised if NO ONE has thought of this, and made it work. It's quite possible to buy and sell goods that NEVER pass through any warehouse, office, or even a labeling facility that you own. Yes, someone somewhere actually has to produce the goods, package them, and ship them - but nothing says that Amazon has to do anything more than just collect the money, and distribute that money to the people actually providing the goods and services.
I saw the low-tech version of this decades ago, when the normal mode of communication was by telephone. Brokers set up little offices outside of Chicago, with nothing more than a phone, a filing cabinet, and a desk. From that office, they could receive orders for all manner of goods, from anywhere. The broker makes all the arrangements for purchase, shipping and delivery, and often times the whole deal was "blind". That is, the broker went to great lengths to ensure that the buyer never learns where the goods were actually purchased, or shipped from. And, of course, the broker never warehoused a thing. You CAN'T warehouse much in a motel room in Hobart, Indiana!!
You're sure of that? There is no requirement that Amazon, or any other online store actually stock anything in their own warehouse(s). What was the postmark on your last several Amazon packages? "Shipping" to an Amazon warehouse may or may not be a matter of driving a forklift across an alley. I don't know how Amazon works, and maybe they DO have between 4 and 40 central warehouses scattered around the nation, and all their goods actually pass through their own warehouses. I'm not assuming anything, though. It may all be done electronically. So much for "shipping" - YOU pay for it.
As tjbassoon points out - it is entirely possible, and even likely, that Joe and the little Sixpacks can install Ubuntu (or a derivative) on a modern machine, and NEVER open up a terminal. The Sixpacks aren't geeky enough to purchase exotic hardware, so their machine "just works" after installation. All they are ever going to do anyway, is listen to music, jerk off to some porn, watch a movie, read e-mail, and send some pics to Grandma and friends when they go on vacation. Despite my original post, I use GUI more than CLI, when I'm on Linux. (hey, I learned TRS-DOS, PC-DOS, MS-DOS and DR-DOS first - when I get on a Linux terminal, I STILL want to use DOS commands, which gets me nowhere)
Seriously, most people simply will not need to use the CLI at all, and if they EVER really NEED to use it, it will be during installation. Yeah, a headache, steep learning curve and all that, for the noob - but it beats sending a couple hundred dollars off to Microsoft every year or two.
Brick and mortar stores also pay for shipping. Whether it is Wal-Mart, your local Mom & Pop convenience store, the beer store, or whatever - none of them have their goods delivered for "free". That famous "30% markup" that I've heard so much about has a nice portion eaten away just in shipping. Every contract for goods has a clause regarding shipping. Many are FOB origin - which means the factory pays a forklift driver to load the goods into a truck, but the truck is your responsibility. Others are FOB destination - meaning they'll pay the shipping, but your overall cost will be higher - and probably more than the shipping is worth.
You, the end consumer, just don't SEE those shipping costs.
Brick and mortar stores - all of which have to collect and pay sales taxes - also have to pay corporate income taxes. Why should Amazon have such a huge advantage over brick and mortar stores?
I'm not concerned with the difficulty involved, either from an administrative POV, or a technical POV. In effect, Amazon is doing business in my county, so it's up to them to comply with the tax laws in my county. And, they are also effectively doing business in New York City, Seattle, Miami, Anchorage, Bangor, and Los Angeles. They OWE it to each of those jurisdictions to collect, then submit, the proper sales taxes.
"Just last week I went to install Ubuntu on one of my older laptops and it failed to even boot. Windows XP? Booted and installed with no problem whatsoever."
Well, what did you expect? The laptop was built FOR WINDOWS! Almost every laptop I've ever seen was sold with a little sticker that CERTIFIED that it was designed to be run with Windows. DESIGNED to run Windows. So - if the same engineers had spent the same time DESIGNING that laptop to run with Slackware, what do you think would happen? Slack would "just work", all magical as hell, right? And, Windows may or may not run, depending on the whims of the God of Chaos, right?
Attempting to beat us Linux lovers over the head with the fact that MS extorted all those exclusivity agreements in the '90's may not be such a great idea. You'll remind some of us that MS is still a fucking monopoly that should be broken into a dozen different corporations. This is yet one more reason to despise Bush's "Justice Department".
Your support people shouldn't have to waste their time, teaching people to use a new OS or office suite. Feel free to use this canned reply to any frivolous questions.
"Mr. Wimplestain, can't you see that I'm very busy? Isn't there a "Help" button at the top of your interface? Aren't you being PAID to use that software? Why don't you actually put the software to use, and click that "Help" button? I take it that you are literate, or you wouldn't have been hired. After you have read "Help" from top to bottom a few times, maybe you can come back and teach ME how to use Open Office, alright? NOW GET TO WORK, BEFORE I REPORT YOU, YOU GOLDBRICK!!"
Insert some profanity as appropriate, for effectiveness. Office workers seldom understand anything, unless it's emphasized with plenty of profane terms. They're mostly just mindless zombies, after all.
You exaggerate just a little. Windows XP in it's earliest incarnations was much more stable than the Win9.x line - but far less stable than it's later incarnations. SP1 helped quite a bit, SP2 was a little better, and SP3 is almost "rock stable". Almost. It still falls far short of the stability of almost any open-source OS. Vista? Forget it. Win7? It looks stable - I haven't found any real problems with it (besides it's cost) - but Win7 is certainly not 10 years old.
Those who fear the CLI shouldn't even own a freaking computer. Crybabies and whiners. "Oh, I can't do ANYTHING, unless there is a pretty picture for it!!" Sit your sorry ass down with the manual for MSDOS 5, 6, or 6.22 and LEARN the basics of computing. Then, pick up another basic - it's called BASIC. From there, you can branch out to some scripting languages. Run a machine for 6 months with absolutely NO GUI installed - then you might be competent to talk about how good, how bad, or how inconvenient any part of a computer might be. Including the CLI. You probably can't operate a standard shift automobile, or roll a window down unless it is electrically powered. Mindless putz. How do you avoid putting your bra on backwards?
Am I missing something here, or are you? What community are you referring to? Do you believe that all of the people of the earth belonged to a single community at some point in the past? Sorry, that has never been so. Not for one single day in history. Even the cave men didn't all belong to a single, homogenous community.
Maybe you're referring to the globalization thing? Sorry, if so - you miss the target. Globalization is little more than a catch phrase passed around by the wealthiest 1 or 2 % of the world's population. It is nothing more than a bid to rule the earth. The Vatican isn't in this community, nor are the Mormons, the Moslems, or China, or India, or the poor in South America, or the poor in Africa - I can just go on and on.
Unless you are so filthy rich that you're unable to spend all of your money in this lifetime, then YOU aren't really part of that community, either. (By "spend", I do not mean squander, or give it away.)
I'll be waiting breathlessly to learn what this "community" is that you refer to.
"but submarines PRIMARILY serve in a deterrent capacity"
Emphasis mine. Submarines don't have a single mission, any more than any other ship in the navy. We certainly HOPE that the presence of those submarines deter any fool from attacking us with nuclear weapons. But, it they fail in their deterrent capacity, they will serve another mission.
There is nothing wrong with GP's reasoning. It's Navy doctrine. It's Army doctrine. It goes right up to the White House. Walk softly and carry a big stick hasn't been forgotten, entirely.
Ever think that some of those people would learn some self respect, independence, and self sufficiency? Maybe the welfare roles would go down, if EVERYONE served. Now, THAT would be one hell of a payoff!!
I do agree that service need not be purely military. The Corps of Engineers could be multiplied a hundred fold, and all those people put to serious work. Doctors might serve in a number of ways, and be credited with service.
I'm all for Robert Heinlein's view - no service, no vote. People who are willing to serve, and willing to risk themselves are the only people fit to vote. Screw all the bleeding hearts who think that they are inherently important. They are not!
Can we use MY air compressor? Please, don't use a generic Wal-Mart compressor. The one we rely on at work has two 3" pistons, with a stroke of about 20 inches. The cooling fan would make a respectable hover craft. It pulls about 75 amps on an 880 circuit. Believe me - we can inflate one worthless human carcass in short order. Or, bring them all in - we can do thousands of them, just as quickly as we can move from one orifice to another!!
Facebook really isn't that bad. I do well on facebook with a lame 300kb connection. What really sucks, are the various flash based forums. Go ahead, hit the various news agencies comment sections. If you don't have a full MB connection, you'll wait and wait and wait for pages to load or refresh.
You don't see this with VBB and other more sensible forums. Despite people badmouthing slashdot all the time, the pages load smoothly and quickly.
Myspace? Different story entirely. That abortion should flushed down the toilet.
It's social engineering. The corporations have been getting the last two generations accustomed to their dishonesty. No one cares anymore, unless and until a health issue is involved. Then, no one cares until some activist watchdog screams to the courts. Americans in particular, and earthmen in general are placid little sheep, willing to accept anything the advertisers throw at them.
Slashdot Mirror
Feminazis never have a holiday either. Go on, it's New Year's. Take a break. You're not going to win any converts tonight, everyone is to drunk.
*sigh*
Taxes. Whatever costs Amazon has, your local vendor has them too. PLUS, he is REQUIRED to collect those taxes. Amazon doesn't have to collect taxes. No matter what you think of my conjecture, Amazon does indeed have an unfair advantage over a brick and mortar store.
More, let's not forget that Amazon has the same advantage over any local store that WalMart has - volume buying and sales.
Joe Schmuck stocks his shelves with items that he had to pay 10 bucks for - but BOTH WalMart and Amazon can get the same items for about 9 bucks.
In short, if you're interested in starting a business, you can't compete with WalMart OR Amazon.
Precisely. I'm in Rural America - the less developed world - and the BEST that I can get is 1 MB DSL, which I can't afford to pay for. My phone bill is $75/month with the 375k that I do have! Little more than two years ago, I didn't even have access to that - it was 56k dial up, that on a really good day gave me 47k. So, my memory of waiting as much as 5 minutes for a page to load hasn't faded. Many many times, I just decided that I didn't really need to see the page, and canceled it.
Even with my ten-times faster DSL, I cancel pages from time to time. Latency is no better now than when I had dial-up, but once the page begins loading, it really is 10 times better - and simply not good enough.
Designers should be aware, if it takes more than 30 seconds to load your page, I'm just GONE. I'll not reward your incompetence and lack of consideration by browsing your site. WHATEVER you are offering is available elsewhere, and Google can find it for me.
People like myself with extremely limited bandwidth see the difference. When I load a page from wherever, that is loaded with adverts (often enough, flash powered) it might take a full minute to load a page. All that bandwidth wasted, just to read a few lines of text, that should load so fast that I don't actually SEE it loading.
One way to stop all that trash loading is to use your HOSTS file, or some other proxy that filters out the advertising, since most of the advertising doesn't even come from the site you're trying to load.
I know - since much of the world has fiber optics, most site developers simply don't CARE that loading their page takes 3 minutes in the less developed world. Believe me, I don't use their site, if I can't block the garbage.
Alright, I'll spell it out.
Corporate headquarters determines that x% of sales are from manufacturers and/or distributing businesses within 100 miles of some town in New Jersey - where one of their major suppliers happens to have a factory. Corporate purchases a warehouse very close to the supplier - next door, if possible. That particular supplier's shipping is now just about zero. The shipping from all those other suppliers within ~100 miles is now reduced to some negligible amount, compared to shipping somewhere like Los Angeles.
Taking this idea a step further, Amazon could rent an office in an individual supplier's plant, put an employee in that office, and make orders for whatever quantity of sales they make each week, to be "delivered" to the employee within the plant. That employee then packages and mails off each individual order.
Going even further, Amazon could easily negotiate a contract with individual manufacturers and suppliers, whereby Amazon is only a middle man. Amazon makes the sale, enters the shipping information from a terminal anywhere in the world, and the manufacturer ships the item directly to the customer.
In this day and age, I'd be terribly surprised if NO ONE has thought of this, and made it work. It's quite possible to buy and sell goods that NEVER pass through any warehouse, office, or even a labeling facility that you own. Yes, someone somewhere actually has to produce the goods, package them, and ship them - but nothing says that Amazon has to do anything more than just collect the money, and distribute that money to the people actually providing the goods and services.
I saw the low-tech version of this decades ago, when the normal mode of communication was by telephone. Brokers set up little offices outside of Chicago, with nothing more than a phone, a filing cabinet, and a desk. From that office, they could receive orders for all manner of goods, from anywhere. The broker makes all the arrangements for purchase, shipping and delivery, and often times the whole deal was "blind". That is, the broker went to great lengths to ensure that the buyer never learns where the goods were actually purchased, or shipped from. And, of course, the broker never warehoused a thing. You CAN'T warehouse much in a motel room in Hobart, Indiana!!
You're sure of that? There is no requirement that Amazon, or any other online store actually stock anything in their own warehouse(s). What was the postmark on your last several Amazon packages? "Shipping" to an Amazon warehouse may or may not be a matter of driving a forklift across an alley. I don't know how Amazon works, and maybe they DO have between 4 and 40 central warehouses scattered around the nation, and all their goods actually pass through their own warehouses. I'm not assuming anything, though. It may all be done electronically. So much for "shipping" - YOU pay for it.
Heh. R00T!!!
As tjbassoon points out - it is entirely possible, and even likely, that Joe and the little Sixpacks can install Ubuntu (or a derivative) on a modern machine, and NEVER open up a terminal. The Sixpacks aren't geeky enough to purchase exotic hardware, so their machine "just works" after installation. All they are ever going to do anyway, is listen to music, jerk off to some porn, watch a movie, read e-mail, and send some pics to Grandma and friends when they go on vacation. Despite my original post, I use GUI more than CLI, when I'm on Linux. (hey, I learned TRS-DOS, PC-DOS, MS-DOS and DR-DOS first - when I get on a Linux terminal, I STILL want to use DOS commands, which gets me nowhere)
Seriously, most people simply will not need to use the CLI at all, and if they EVER really NEED to use it, it will be during installation. Yeah, a headache, steep learning curve and all that, for the noob - but it beats sending a couple hundred dollars off to Microsoft every year or two.
Brick and mortar stores also pay for shipping. Whether it is Wal-Mart, your local Mom & Pop convenience store, the beer store, or whatever - none of them have their goods delivered for "free". That famous "30% markup" that I've heard so much about has a nice portion eaten away just in shipping. Every contract for goods has a clause regarding shipping. Many are FOB origin - which means the factory pays a forklift driver to load the goods into a truck, but the truck is your responsibility. Others are FOB destination - meaning they'll pay the shipping, but your overall cost will be higher - and probably more than the shipping is worth.
You, the end consumer, just don't SEE those shipping costs.
Brick and mortar stores - all of which have to collect and pay sales taxes - also have to pay corporate income taxes. Why should Amazon have such a huge advantage over brick and mortar stores?
I'm not concerned with the difficulty involved, either from an administrative POV, or a technical POV. In effect, Amazon is doing business in my county, so it's up to them to comply with the tax laws in my county. And, they are also effectively doing business in New York City, Seattle, Miami, Anchorage, Bangor, and Los Angeles. They OWE it to each of those jurisdictions to collect, then submit, the proper sales taxes.
"The merits of indoctrination are why people are paying for Windows."
FTFY
"Just last week I went to install Ubuntu on one of my older laptops and it failed to even boot. Windows XP? Booted and installed with no problem whatsoever."
Well, what did you expect? The laptop was built FOR WINDOWS! Almost every laptop I've ever seen was sold with a little sticker that CERTIFIED that it was designed to be run with Windows. DESIGNED to run Windows. So - if the same engineers had spent the same time DESIGNING that laptop to run with Slackware, what do you think would happen? Slack would "just work", all magical as hell, right? And, Windows may or may not run, depending on the whims of the God of Chaos, right?
Attempting to beat us Linux lovers over the head with the fact that MS extorted all those exclusivity agreements in the '90's may not be such a great idea. You'll remind some of us that MS is still a fucking monopoly that should be broken into a dozen different corporations. This is yet one more reason to despise Bush's "Justice Department".
Your support people shouldn't have to waste their time, teaching people to use a new OS or office suite. Feel free to use this canned reply to any frivolous questions.
"Mr. Wimplestain, can't you see that I'm very busy? Isn't there a "Help" button at the top of your interface? Aren't you being PAID to use that software? Why don't you actually put the software to use, and click that "Help" button? I take it that you are literate, or you wouldn't have been hired. After you have read "Help" from top to bottom a few times, maybe you can come back and teach ME how to use Open Office, alright? NOW GET TO WORK, BEFORE I REPORT YOU, YOU GOLDBRICK!!"
Insert some profanity as appropriate, for effectiveness. Office workers seldom understand anything, unless it's emphasized with plenty of profane terms. They're mostly just mindless zombies, after all.
You aren't really licensed to drive, are you? Is it due to age, or a mental condition?
You exaggerate just a little. Windows XP in it's earliest incarnations was much more stable than the Win9.x line - but far less stable than it's later incarnations. SP1 helped quite a bit, SP2 was a little better, and SP3 is almost "rock stable". Almost. It still falls far short of the stability of almost any open-source OS. Vista? Forget it. Win7? It looks stable - I haven't found any real problems with it (besides it's cost) - but Win7 is certainly not 10 years old.
Those who fear the CLI shouldn't even own a freaking computer. Crybabies and whiners. "Oh, I can't do ANYTHING, unless there is a pretty picture for it!!"
Sit your sorry ass down with the manual for MSDOS 5, 6, or 6.22 and LEARN the basics of computing. Then, pick up another basic - it's called BASIC. From there, you can branch out to some scripting languages.
Run a machine for 6 months with absolutely NO GUI installed - then you might be competent to talk about how good, how bad, or how inconvenient any part of a computer might be. Including the CLI.
You probably can't operate a standard shift automobile, or roll a window down unless it is electrically powered.
Mindless putz.
How do you avoid putting your bra on backwards?
"We can be safe if we are a community again"
Am I missing something here, or are you? What community are you referring to? Do you believe that all of the people of the earth belonged to a single community at some point in the past? Sorry, that has never been so. Not for one single day in history. Even the cave men didn't all belong to a single, homogenous community.
Maybe you're referring to the globalization thing? Sorry, if so - you miss the target. Globalization is little more than a catch phrase passed around by the wealthiest 1 or 2 % of the world's population. It is nothing more than a bid to rule the earth. The Vatican isn't in this community, nor are the Mormons, the Moslems, or China, or India, or the poor in South America, or the poor in Africa - I can just go on and on.
Unless you are so filthy rich that you're unable to spend all of your money in this lifetime, then YOU aren't really part of that community, either. (By "spend", I do not mean squander, or give it away.)
I'll be waiting breathlessly to learn what this "community" is that you refer to.
"but submarines PRIMARILY serve in a deterrent capacity"
Emphasis mine. Submarines don't have a single mission, any more than any other ship in the navy. We certainly HOPE that the presence of those submarines deter any fool from attacking us with nuclear weapons. But, it they fail in their deterrent capacity, they will serve another mission.
There is nothing wrong with GP's reasoning. It's Navy doctrine. It's Army doctrine. It goes right up to the White House. Walk softly and carry a big stick hasn't been forgotten, entirely.
Ever think that some of those people would learn some self respect, independence, and self sufficiency? Maybe the welfare roles would go down, if EVERYONE served. Now, THAT would be one hell of a payoff!!
I do agree that service need not be purely military. The Corps of Engineers could be multiplied a hundred fold, and all those people put to serious work. Doctors might serve in a number of ways, and be credited with service.
I'm all for Robert Heinlein's view - no service, no vote. People who are willing to serve, and willing to risk themselves are the only people fit to vote. Screw all the bleeding hearts who think that they are inherently important. They are not!
Ooops. Yes. Typo. I don't mess with anything higher than 440. We do have 1000 volt service, but I don't go beyond the 440 bus. ;^)
"Are you sure?" Isn't that a clippy thing?
Damn Linux. They need to implement a clippy for those of us who are computer illiterate!!
Can we use MY air compressor? Please, don't use a generic Wal-Mart compressor. The one we rely on at work has two 3" pistons, with a stroke of about 20 inches. The cooling fan would make a respectable hover craft. It pulls about 75 amps on an 880 circuit. Believe me - we can inflate one worthless human carcass in short order. Or, bring them all in - we can do thousands of them, just as quickly as we can move from one orifice to another!!
Fuck Gillette. I stopped shaving back in 1979. When I start looking scruffy, I rely on http://jwissandsons.com/
Facebook really isn't that bad. I do well on facebook with a lame 300kb connection. What really sucks, are the various flash based forums. Go ahead, hit the various news agencies comment sections. If you don't have a full MB connection, you'll wait and wait and wait for pages to load or refresh.
You don't see this with VBB and other more sensible forums. Despite people badmouthing slashdot all the time, the pages load smoothly and quickly.
Myspace? Different story entirely. That abortion should flushed down the toilet.
It's social engineering. The corporations have been getting the last two generations accustomed to their dishonesty. No one cares anymore, unless and until a health issue is involved. Then, no one cares until some activist watchdog screams to the courts. Americans in particular, and earthmen in general are placid little sheep, willing to accept anything the advertisers throw at them.