This needs to stop. When they come to your house you tell them to fuck off and come back with a warrant. Cooperating only encourages them.
Mod parent up: "Informative"
TFA says they only Googled backpacks and pressure cookers, nary a purchase was made; They only searched for information on it.
Imagine the dialogue if the person answering the door was wearing a hijab?
Police: "Do you have any pressure cooker bombs?"
Homeowner: "No."
Police: "Fuck you buddy! You just earned a one way ticket to Gitmo!"
This typo-filled summary is nothing more than a lame "nerd-baiting" attempt to rile up the Linux supporters because Microsoft released software dedicated to run on Linux. This is supposed to be chalked up at a "win" for Linus? Yeah I'm sure he really doesn't give two shits. Woo-hoo, I guess we are all supposed to run in the street with penguin costumes now and burn Surface tablets.
The fact is that the world rarely cares what makes the hardware run...the majority of end users just care they can use XYZ app on their device and it works. This entire summary should be modded "-1 flamebait" for trying to rile up the Linux community over nothing.
If the goal is stopping support of morally abhorrent behavior in the Middle East, I suggest we take the quick and practical path there.
Like a medium yield nuclear device?
MAP is nothing more than collusion. I think they should be flatly illegal. In a totally free market no one would ever obey them.
You don't want a free market you want a market that is ruled the way you like.
The correct solution to amazon paying this little is just to raise the minimum wage for this job. If you don't want to do that, then you think this wage is fine.
MAP is not collusion, it is the currently best (and affirmatively deemed legal by courts) way to create a fair playing field for all the resellers of a particular product. I know most people feel MAP is a bad thing because as end users we all pay the same MAP price, just like trying to buy an Apple product - price is same everywhere. With this being said, when a company as large as Amazon or Wal-Mart does not abide by MAP, it is simply a race to the bottom with who has the lowest price. Because these large companies get a huge quantity discount, without MAP they could afford to sell for pennies on the dollar for an extended period of time. This action has the very real potential put all the other resellers out of business. When the other competition is gone, Amazon (et. al.) are free to raise the prices as high as they want as they retain complete market control. The manufacturer of the good is forced to sell to Amazon at whatever price Amazon determines. Amazon is so large that they can make or break a company simply by not choosing to sell a product...and you can bet your ass it is on Amazon's terms because they know the power they hold.
A marketplace without MAP, as you suggest, is simply a setup for monopolistic control by companies who can afford to do it. Look what happened to all the Mom and Pop shops in the US with the introduction of Wal-Mart: gone. Without some kind of level price structure, the reseller with the deepest pockets will prevail.
Couldn't even RTFS?
This is Slashdot, nobody RTFA. You must be new here.
The issue with Amazon is while they offer great service and the lowest prices, they are forcing not only other businesses to go under but also dictating the prices of goods in the market. Many companies have a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy in order to keep an even playing field for their resellers. Amazon is so large, and buys so much, that do not obey to MAP policies - they do what they please. If the manufacturer doesn't like this, they can choose not sell to Amazon and subsequently lose sales in the millions of dollars.
In the wake of low prices and convenience, we are seeing the extinction of a free-enterprise market and the transition of skilled laborers to box-stuffers....all run by the efficiency of a computer system.
Move along, nothing to see here.
"It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side." -- Frank Zappa
