Yes, but clothes and shoes aren't taxed at all until you hit $110, and you can always take the bus over to Paramus and pay no sales tax at all on clothes. Presumably, these same rules will Apply to online retailers. So in effect, nothing will change for those kinds of items.
If you aren't in the market for clothes, I should mention the New Jersey "Urban Enterprise Zones". Those only have 3.5% tax and are easy to get to from NYC.
I imagine that kind of storage would work for an Iron Mountain type operation, where you can easily consolidate a single client's data. For Amazon, this approach would be messier - a single client would have data scattered all over a huge number of tapes. I suspect the number of tape drives (and robotic or human feeders) necessary to handle this situation would not work well. I suppose they could do some intelligent caching and some off-peak consolidation - but in the end, I suspect tape loses a lot of it's cost advantages.
Still, I'd bet they use tape somewhere in their operation:)
I don't think it will help them much. Brick and mortar still has to pay property tax, utilities, etc. They still have to finance high-value real estate. They still have to have a clean, wide-open space which is aesthetically pleasing but economically wasteful. Anyway, I'm not aware of states with 10% sales tax - usually it is about half of that, and the highest seems to be 7.5% in CA. To get to 10%, I have to scroll down the list and find the highest state taxes and combine them with the highest local taxes.
I have never seen those. It's a great idea. I'm still skeptical, though. I've come to believe that the best way to protect your data is to keep it live, if you can afford it. I try to keep two local live copies and one remote. I also archive things, but I can't count on those IMHO.
My most important files are family photos and videos. I try to keep the raw files live, and in addition every time I produce a DVD from the videos, I also copy any photos from the same time period onto the DVD. Then, I send the DVD to any relatives who might care about the content. In effect, this is a distributed backup system, so long as one copy of each DVD survives. That's my last-ditch backup:)
Yes, I meant the grassy areas. Dogs abound on the paths, and not all grassy areas are dog-free. In the mornings, you can even let them off of their leashes in certain areas. At some of the neighborhood parks, there are dog exercise areas - even separating the little dogs from the big ones. Depending on your feelings about space scarcity and canines, it is either very nice or a little depressing.
Yes. I think Amazon simply needs more automation. If a researcher needs to analyze some LHC data, some poor grad student can go rifling through mountains of tape. If an Amazon customer needs their Glacier data, Amazon would need to construct some sort of massive tape loading and library mechanism. I know these already exist commercially (e.g. StorageTek, etc.), but they are not cheap and they are probably not on the scale that Amazon would need.
Just be careful - optical disks degrade, too. Years ago before hard drives became so incredibly dirt cheap, I would do my little video editing thing and then back up the project files to DVD. And not just any DVD - I did my homework and found the best-rated archival DVDs (sorry, don't remember the brand - only that they came from Japan). Anyway, I just sucked them back onto my NAS, and some of them had developed a teeny bit of unreadable data. Fortunately, I had made PAR2 files for everything. Between par2repair and ddrescue, I was able to recover the data. But the moral of the story is don't rely on optical disks to be magical storage that does not degrade.
I lived in NYC for a few years, and was a bit taken aback by how people accept dogs shitting and peeing in the middle of the sidewalk. I assumed people had to "curb" their dog. With the number of dogs in NYC, the shit imprints all over the sidewalk soon cover almost the entire surface and make a kind of shit collage on the sidewalk, interrupted only by little rivers of dog piss. Very nice. At least they are banned from Central Park - that place would become uninhabitable very quickly if the dogs were allowed in.
They seem to claim 10 miles. I'm not sure how they will manage this, but maybe they are counting on continued improvements in battery technology.
Payload is non-existing
They claim the vast majority of their orders are under 5 lbs. (2.25 kg), and that this can haul that much payload.
Octocopters are good-weather toys
They don't address this at all, and it is a very good point.
crashes due to mechanical faults are inevitable
This is true of standard delivery vehicles as well. However, these don't weigh several tons so who knows? They might even be safer and cheaper to insure.
I expect this service would also be pretty expensive. People pay a lot of money for overnight service, it seems reasonable to expect them to pay even more for 30 minute service. This delivery system does not need to be cost-competitive with UPS ground or the Postal Service... it needs to be competitive with FedEx next day service.
I agree, though when you do the cost-benefit analysis, the danger of road-bound delivery vehicles cruising around residential neighborhoods and people driving to stores should be considered as well.
POTS did not survive, but technically most of the areas were under mandatory evacuation. Without getting too much into the politics of it, I consider people not evacuating to be a separate issue from whether or not essential services stay up when they aren't expected to.
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Yes, but clothes and shoes aren't taxed at all until you hit $110, and you can always take the bus over to Paramus and pay no sales tax at all on clothes. Presumably, these same rules will Apply to online retailers. So in effect, nothing will change for those kinds of items.
If you aren't in the market for clothes, I should mention the New Jersey "Urban Enterprise Zones". Those only have 3.5% tax and are easy to get to from NYC.
By law, EU countries have to have 15% to 25% VAT for non-essential goods.
I never understood why Europeans went shopping in New York until I heard about their VAT.
I imagine that kind of storage would work for an Iron Mountain type operation, where you can easily consolidate a single client's data. For Amazon, this approach would be messier - a single client would have data scattered all over a huge number of tapes. I suspect the number of tape drives (and robotic or human feeders) necessary to handle this situation would not work well. I suppose they could do some intelligent caching and some off-peak consolidation - but in the end, I suspect tape loses a lot of it's cost advantages.
Still, I'd bet they use tape somewhere in their operation :)
I don't think it will help them much. Brick and mortar still has to pay property tax, utilities, etc. They still have to finance high-value real estate. They still have to have a clean, wide-open space which is aesthetically pleasing but economically wasteful. Anyway, I'm not aware of states with 10% sales tax - usually it is about half of that, and the highest seems to be 7.5% in CA. To get to 10%, I have to scroll down the list and find the highest state taxes and combine them with the highest local taxes.
the Sun is pretty stable when it comes to that
Then how do you explain global warming?
(I keed, I keed...)
I have never seen those. It's a great idea. I'm still skeptical, though. I've come to believe that the best way to protect your data is to keep it live, if you can afford it. I try to keep two local live copies and one remote. I also archive things, but I can't count on those IMHO.
My most important files are family photos and videos. I try to keep the raw files live, and in addition every time I produce a DVD from the videos, I also copy any photos from the same time period onto the DVD. Then, I send the DVD to any relatives who might care about the content. In effect, this is a distributed backup system, so long as one copy of each DVD survives. That's my last-ditch backup :)
Yes, I meant the grassy areas. Dogs abound on the paths, and not all grassy areas are dog-free. In the mornings, you can even let them off of their leashes in certain areas. At some of the neighborhood parks, there are dog exercise areas - even separating the little dogs from the big ones. Depending on your feelings about space scarcity and canines, it is either very nice or a little depressing.
That sounds right.
Yes. I think Amazon simply needs more automation. If a researcher needs to analyze some LHC data, some poor grad student can go rifling through mountains of tape. If an Amazon customer needs their Glacier data, Amazon would need to construct some sort of massive tape loading and library mechanism. I know these already exist commercially (e.g. StorageTek, etc.), but they are not cheap and they are probably not on the scale that Amazon would need.
Just be careful - optical disks degrade, too. Years ago before hard drives became so incredibly dirt cheap, I would do my little video editing thing and then back up the project files to DVD. And not just any DVD - I did my homework and found the best-rated archival DVDs (sorry, don't remember the brand - only that they came from Japan). Anyway, I just sucked them back onto my NAS, and some of them had developed a teeny bit of unreadable data. Fortunately, I had made PAR2 files for everything. Between par2repair and ddrescue, I was able to recover the data. But the moral of the story is don't rely on optical disks to be magical storage that does not degrade.
They are charging the dog owners, both for the initial test and for the forensics work later on.
This. It can even be voluntary if they'll waive the fine.
I lived in NYC for a few years, and was a bit taken aback by how people accept dogs shitting and peeing in the middle of the sidewalk. I assumed people had to "curb" their dog. With the number of dogs in NYC, the shit imprints all over the sidewalk soon cover almost the entire surface and make a kind of shit collage on the sidewalk, interrupted only by little rivers of dog piss. Very nice. At least they are banned from Central Park - that place would become uninhabitable very quickly if the dogs were allowed in.
And cats aren't as tasty.
Isn't there a 40-and-over rule for people to watch 60 minutes?
Range is abysmal.
They seem to claim 10 miles. I'm not sure how they will manage this, but maybe they are counting on continued improvements in battery technology.
Payload is non-existing
They claim the vast majority of their orders are under 5 lbs. (2.25 kg), and that this can haul that much payload.
Octocopters are good-weather toys
They don't address this at all, and it is a very good point.
crashes due to mechanical faults are inevitable
This is true of standard delivery vehicles as well. However, these don't weigh several tons so who knows? They might even be safer and cheaper to insure.
I expect this service would also be pretty expensive. People pay a lot of money for overnight service, it seems reasonable to expect them to pay even more for 30 minute service. This delivery system does not need to be cost-competitive with UPS ground or the Postal Service... it needs to be competitive with FedEx next day service.
I agree, though when you do the cost-benefit analysis, the danger of road-bound delivery vehicles cruising around residential neighborhoods and people driving to stores should be considered as well.
Even Linux gets the occasional security update for a privilege escalation issue. I wish them luck if they choose to depend on their sandbox.
To save 10 or 20 bucks a month?
POTS did not survive, but technically most of the areas were under mandatory evacuation. Without getting too much into the politics of it, I consider people not evacuating to be a separate issue from whether or not essential services stay up when they aren't expected to.
I don't have FIOS available, but my understanding is that the router that sits in your house is battery-backed-up.
I bet sewer lines would be better maintained if they were strung over people's heads.
Heh, yeah, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't after you.
That's another gift idea I'll have to keep in mind.
This is a list for your paranoid delusional friends and family. I have a few of those.