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Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

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Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#211

Post by mschuster91 »

Kocrachon wrote: post #186
mschuster91 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When companies are able to do this, they should be broken up, period. Unfortunately we are in a system that's essentially the worst of capitalism with none of the good (and especially not with regulations), so there is no hope left and more jobs will migrate to China. That's what Trump should tackle if he wants to stop job migration, but it seems like he's focused on anything but regulating BigCos.

Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that? Back when Barnes and Noble was the big book store, same thing, they pressured better prices. What do you do, split up the book store into two companies, who still control the same market share and will both still put pressure on the book companies? Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle…

> Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that?

In Germany, book prices are regulated: the printer sets the price, and the price the customer pays must be this price. Only exception are damaged (e.g. books with CD-ROM, but the CD is missing) or used books.

The prices the retailers have to pay at the printer are of course different and may well be based on the # of books the retailer has purchased, but the system right now successfully prevents price wars. And yes, I am happy with that, because it ensures that authors get proper funding instead of having to fight for the scraps.

> Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle prices, because it's considerably cheaper to sell a 12 meg file than a 200 page physical book

The printing and distribution costs of a book are not that high, once you have a significant enough mass of books. What Amazon wants to do here is squeeze the authors off their profit, and this must be prevented.

Books are culture, and culture must not be bowing to the demands of predatory capitalism or else we'll sooner or later live in a Idiocracy world with a movie called "*ss" the sole Oscar winner... (okay, that was an exaggeration, but still, it's a danger to culture!)

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#212

Post by slowmovintarget »

vidarh wrote: post #52
chriswarbo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> huge value for membership (Amazon Instant Video included) Forcing customers to support their unwanted video service by bundling it with the next-day shipping service was a completely transparent move, and every Amazon customer I know a) saw straight through it, b) doesn't use it and c) would like to stop paying for it.

The vast majority of time we spend watching TV is via a FireTV box, with a good split between Amazons own video service, the Netflix app (which is very well integrated - Netflix results show up in the normal FireTV search results), and the BBC iPlayer app. With the addition of additional "channel" subscriptions I suspect we'll use it more and more.

Aye. I got Prime when we needed diaper subscriptions.

Later when watching TV on the big screen would keep the little one up, Prime Video was the only way to watch a lot of things (on the PC).

Want the shipping, want the video.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#213

Post by Kocrachon »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #192
oceanstone wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The best way to express it is that everything you see on Netflix up until the play button is on AWS, the actual video is delivered through our CDN,” Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said. http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-computing/...

Yes. I'm aware and they do https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ - but the point remains that they're both: 1. Giving their largest competitor money 2. Relying on them not to peek at their data for competitive advantage. Which are the items that Walmart has objections with.

Is Amazon Video really a competitor? Their prime offering is shit. Hulu, to me, is a far more viable competitor. Amazon Video is only good for buying or renting. Their free offerings are terrible.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#214

Post by mindcrime »

kristjansson wrote: post #158
mindcrime wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libertarians don't realize that the system they're advocating for is essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers In a purely Libertarian world, there wouldn't be any corporations, since corporations are a legal fiction that depend on the State for their existence.

... Then what, in that world, do you call the artifice by which humans cooperate to sell other humans the the services the non-existent state isn't providing?

A company, or a business. Note that I did not say there wouldn't be business or companies... just not corporations because those are a specific legal entity that are created by the State.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#215

Post by ska »

KirinDave wrote: post #94

This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…

   Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year.
Not so long ago, people were saying exactly the same thing about Walmart.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#216

Post by mindcrime »

KirinDave wrote: post #180
mindcrime wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libertarians don't realize that the system they're advocating for is essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers In a purely Libertarian world, there wouldn't be any corporations, since corporations are a legal fiction that depend on the State for their existence.

That's... Not... That's not how human cooperation and society work.

Sorry, but I really don't know what you're trying to say. Corporations are actually a violation of the way "normal human cooperation and society" work, since they break the connection between an activity and liability for that action.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#217

Post by KirinDave »

tyleraldrich wrote: post #163
shakestheclown wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second paragraph I have read in almost the same form about Wal-mart in the past.

I actually thought he wrote "Walmart" at the start. The same paragraph certainly applies to both, funnily enough.

I don't disagree with that assertion about Wal-Mart either. The only bright spot in this mess is that these two titans are limiting each other's growth while less outrageously sized entities try to work out how to not have their economies completely rewired without a chance to react.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#218

Post by Bartweiss »

ska wrote: post #215
KirinDave wrote: post #94

This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…

Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. Not so long ago, people were saying exactly the same thing about Walmart.

And it's still true, at least in some parts of the country. There are places in the Midwest where Walmart is the only place a lot of people shop. There are towns in the southeast going broke in part because they're paying police to act as Walmart internal security.

But I suppose two battling monsters beat one rampaging monster, at least.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#219

Post by mindcrime »

harlanji wrote: post #169
mindcrime wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libertarians don't realize that the system they're advocating for is essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers In a purely Libertarian world, there wouldn't be any corporations, since corporations are a legal fiction that depend on the State for their existence.

If that's true, what occupies the space between Libertarian and Anarchist? There's an umbrella of libertarian thought camps, you're thinking of Anarcho-Capitalism which is a pretty small faction.

Well, as an anarcho-capitalist / market anarchist, I hold that our version is the "pure" form of Libertarianism. This is why I phrased that as "In a purely Libertarian world". I look at other camps, like minarchists, as compromising the fundamental essence of Libertarianism in varying ways.

But, to be fair, I am biased. So there's that.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#220

Post by __d__ »

I sold to Walmart for 4 years. In the beginning we believed we were lucky to become vendors. Then we realized how much stress they created. Every single year they would short pay our invoices. We would have to submit a claim with Walmart accounting. This process was completely and utterly time consuming. But the worst of it, they wouldn't pay the invoices owed until a year later. It's hard to float a $100,000 short pay as a small business.

They did much more and I was surprised that they existed this way in business

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