I think in essence Amazon is a VC funded charity. Amazon has been great for consumers, driving down the cost of all sorts of products. For their VC backers, the returns have been less than stellar Amazon's model is to be the low margin competitor in each segment, ostensibly to drive out competition in the hopes of raising margins later. This doesn't seem to be happening as other competitors are matching or bettering their prices.

The washup being that Amazon will continue to exist, continuing to make minimal profits (especially in comparison to their VC backer's investments). Hence my view that their VC backers are essentially making low interest loans/donations to a charity whose purpose is to deliver lower prices to consumers.

At first your argument sounded persuasive and I might have wanted to subscribe to your newsletter, but now I can't. Looser.

Except Paypal of course.

Getting old? Does Rule 34 mean anything to you?
 

I don't think these problems are inevitable at all. Why is it that pretty much every other western, first world country can run elections without these "inevitable problems"?

I personally know of complex multi billion dollar deals done via spreadsheet (usually via well qualified finance people). Are you really going to trust a computer programmer to develop a financial model of a billion dollar business that is up for sale?

Nothing can match the flexibility (and speed) of excel. Most of the time you might be bidding against competitors and you won't have time to wait for perfect information to populate some database or VBA edifice.

The key problem here was a simple schoolboy error - mixing real and nominal numbers (ie being inconsistent in the treatment of inflation). This was a pebkac error and not really Excel's fault.

I was going to give this another +1, but instead I'll comment.

Firstly I'm a windows user and will never be a mac or linux user. I know my way around computers but when it comes to wikipedia's markup - I'm sure I could learn those obscure symbols if I really wanted to, but really I just can't be fucked. I bet I'm not the only one.

+5 agree on everything else - bots are cause more damage than good, deletionism is a problem, and YES - some form of community (not appointed experts) peer review is needed.

You're getting it all wrong.

Hi, you must be new here, so sorry for being a meme-nazi, but

You're doing it wrong

TFTFY

Yes, but I want my music IN THE CLOUD!!!

Yes, there's no way they're fooling me into buying The White Album, AGAIN!

Last I checked, pirating music was way easier than buying it legitimately and no one cares which country you are in. Could the music industry, just perhaps, stop being a joke?

Hear Hear. When will the music industry wake up?

I'm in Australia, but access the internet at work via US servers. Just tried to buy music through Google Music - but it requires a US credit card. My Australian and UK credit cards didn't work.....

Bingo!

Can I get a "phone that just makes calls" post?

I had a whole essay ready to go but I will distill it:

1 - Microsoft products are an order of magnitude better than is the crap that is google docs or libre office

2 - Its not the 90's anymore. Bill Gates has done an extraordinary amount of good with his money

(ps, yes I can't wait untill Ballmer is retired either)