What? You can't just make some tangentially related comparison without explanation and call that an argument. And yes, you do have to carry ID at a border crossing, and yes, that's okay.

Just because you don't have use for these features doesn't mean they're not useful to a lot of people. My PC is in my office, with a normal monitor, while my television and consoles are in a larger room with couches, suitable for family viewing. Playing a digital collection to this screen either requires me to hook up a laptop every time or have some device that can do the job. If a console (or the TV itself) can do it without me having to go out and buy or build a special purpose streaming device, all the better. I'm sure this scenario describes a lot of people.

Or she could have obeyed the law and filled out the one page form.

It's not illegal to do those things. You just need to do some paperwork.

Have you ever crossed a border? They don't need a pretense. They can search anyone they want, without reason.

I assume this can distinguish between someone with cash in their wallet and a suitcase full of $100s...

They don't need a reason to do a search or give extra scrutiny at a border crossing. Furthermore, carrying more than $10,000 in cash across the border without reporting it is illegal.

Dear slashdot, thanks for escaping the "#" in the link in my above post to a "%23". How helpful of you to break my intra-page link. I'm curious if this just applies to "#"-signs at the beginning of the URI, or if you can't link to parts of a page at all. Here is a test of linking to a sub-page on Wikipedia:

Fragment Identifier

I don't think it's so clear cut. While it's clearly not at the same level of physicality as sports like American football or rugby, competitive videogaming is closer to these than it is to, say, chess. This isn't you playing games on a lazy weekend afternoon; if you've seen videos of professional gamers competing, it is clear that being good requires a high degree of speed, precision, stamina, and physical coordination. I think this merits being placed in the same category of sport as, e.g. auto racing, golf, or ping pong (credit to div_2n for mentioning golf and ping pong).

I'm not sure why the article claims that opening new warehouses will contribute to operating losses. The price war certainly makes sense, since selling your product for less directly translates to lower profits. My best explanation is to note that what you quote is the writer paraphrasing Mr. Szkutak, rather than a direct quote from Mr. Szkutak. I'd guess that the article writer is slightly confused as to what exactly Mr. Skutak was saying when he mentioned the new warehouses, since he is a tech writer and not a finance writer.

Accounting statements are based around three types of accounts: assets, liabilities, and equity. Broadly, assets are things of value the company owns, liabilities are things they owe others, and equity is what's left over, i.e. the net value of the company. The profit and loss statement explains why equity changed in a given time period. Many people confuse this with a cash flow statement, which explains why the amount of cash a company owns changed. When a company makes an investment, they are exchanging cash (a type of asset) for whatever they bought (another asset). Since the equity doesn't change, the purchase itself doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It will show up eventually over time, however, as the asset is depreciated: as the investment is used and moves toward the end of its lifespan, it loses value. This loss is a decrease in the value of the asset, and corresponds with a decrease in equity (so it is an expense).

You are correct; investments show up when they are depcreciated over the course of their use. A good investment, however, will generate more revenue than its depreciation expense, so such an investment should not have a net negative effect on any profit and loss statement.

Accounting tip: infrastructure investment doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It is only relevant for cash flow, and I don't think anyone accuses Amazon of managing cash poorly. Amazon isn't profitable because their sale prices are so close to the costs of the goods they sell. They can't stop any of these losses because they can't sell anything without first buying it from someone else. The only ways for them to increase profitability of their retail business are to raise prices (which they can maybe do) or to cut their costs for each item (which are probably pretty close to as low as possible already).

It is very important to note that this particular stance is about evidence outside of the United States, not investigations of activities occurring outside the United States. It is routine for a court to compel people and companies to produce evidence related to an investigation. Since these companies have operations in the US, the court has the means to enforce such a compulsion; where the evidence happens to be seems irrelevant to me.

I'm alright with a cashless future, so long as it's done right. One thing it can't be is the current propriety charge card system implemented by and for rent-seeking middlemen. It is the government's job to develop modern, usable currency (electronic or otherwise), and they have been lax in this responsibility.