I agree, it's a long game. If Wall Street investors told Amazon "grow as big as you can be, reach for the skies," then clearly they are in it for the longterm. Someone on this thread also mentioned that Amazon is re-investing its profit in growth, which is why its graph of sales maybe growing exponentially up but profit line is zero or flat. This is why I'm claiming that it's not a normal company. How can it afford to do what it's doing? And for that long (since 1997?)? Even if you find investors in Europe to do the same, you will have 2 problems: scepticism and not-so-deep pockets. The culture of risk taking is far greater in the US. I'm not sure why trade ministers over Europe are not talking more about the disaster (e.g. death of local book stores) that's being created by hurricane Amazon.

From the documentary I mentioned, a lady said she buys books at £8 while Amazon sells the same at £5.50 (with free shipping!). Afterwards the Amazon rep agreed that sometimes they sell books at a loss. France saw this danger and their Minister of commerce talked about tackling this threat on the documentary (i believe Free Shipping was mentioned too). Let me reiterate my question, how can one compete against a "company" like Amazon (IPO 1997)? Every country it goes to, it kills off local rivals because they don't have the same generous investors and banking credit-lines as Amazon. This is just not normal.

To me Amazon is not a normal company at all because the philosophy of its investors is "Do whatever you have to do, don't worry about profits/losses, we'll be right behind you." How can one compete against a company like that? It's as if a bank (hell, maybe Treasury!) opened an infinite credit line just for Amazon! No wonder our high-street shops (and online shops) are falling like flies!

From a BBC documentary on Amazon (Business Boomers) someone said "Amazon was designed to be a shark right from the start." It's true in a way. Since spending money is no issue, it can do whatever it wants with its prices while growing its business areas. However its brick & mortar (or online) rivals cannot. They don't have an infinite credit line with their banks or investors, and depend on their profit margins. I'm wondering why European governments have not cracked down on this unfair "business" that is Amazon?

My 512GB 830 series heats up like the CPU does. The 500GB traditional 7200rpm drive next to it stays relatively cool. I thought SSD were the future of the storage, not a flipping burn/fire hazard!

the queef?

Basically anyone who disagrees with the government, their friendship with banksters and bloodshed they caused after invading a country based on lies (George Bush & Tony Blair). Even criticising a fast food outlet with "Your food sucks!" or a religion. Free-speech advocates and freedom fighters will now be victims of this anti-troll law. I sure hope people falsely accused will sue the government for all inconvenience caused.

See what am talking about! Lots of IFs, DOs and DONTs. What's the point of spending $35K/year + living fees for 4 years just to find out that you're basically fucked if you want to program anything. Should have gone for culinary or wood/metal carving. Once they graduate they can start converting their ideas into the physical world, no messing about or perusing USPTO.

Do I go ahead developing something regardless of patent or not? For instance, if I want to code an audio editor, do i go ahead and code or do I first check if "Timeline display for audio waveform" has been patented and therefore I cannot make and sell an audio editing app?

Why spend 3 to 4 years studying computer science just to realise at the end, that everything patentable in software has been patented (from the truly stupid, trivial to non-trivial ideas) and big firms holding the patents have been and are doing so for decades and decades!! For innovation's sake and to tell university student that they have a future in this sector, isn't it time to shorten the life of software patents or ban them all together?

If filthy Monsanto can sue State of Vermont over "GMO" food labelling, on grounds that this violates Monsanto's freedom of speech (yes, am still working that one out), then it's in Twitter's god damn right to sue the US government over its constant abuse of people's private life! It's like asking someone to stop raping you but that someone enacted laws to legalise rape. This is what's going on in the US today!

Sometimes when I log into Yahoo mail (https log-in page), the secure icon in Firefox changes from padlock to exclamation mark. Same problem on Twitter, the https turns into an exclamation mark. This is a permanent problem on Google Image search. The worst thing about this problem is in Yahoo. When I press tab and am about to fill in my password, the caret jumps from password field to username field, which means part of my username now has appended to it part of my password. I only notice that after hitting Enter and the screen returns an invalid login error. My suspicion is that my ISP has somehow managed to inject a tiny Java script into my https log-in page. In Facebook, sometimes my first login attempt doesn't even register, so I have to hit Enter again. Is that me being too paranoid?

She will probably call you a "troll" just for voicing your opinion. :)

Who makes the laws in France? I find this ruling so incredibly stupid that I might indefinitely postpone my already delayed-by-a-decade trip to Paris.

Is this the same Microsoft Research team which researched and gave birth to a superb piece of shyte called Windows 8? A version Windows that cannot even update itself because it is that shitty under the hood!

Each time an App wanted to update in the last 6 months, it was to increase its access to areas of my Samsung phone that I thought were completely un-necessary for it to work properly. Makes you wonder who in the Google Store is rubber stamping the ok on such Apps! When will privacy groups wake up and start lawsuits against App makers and/or Google? Maybe it will fist require a popular tech website to run a Top-10 Worst Privacy Infringing Apps in Google store.