Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
online homework codes for old versions were no longer valid. And code-only purchases were only about $2 cheaper than book + code.
What the hell are these? LIke give me the codez kind of codez?
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@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@topspin said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Other than buying some copies of the professors’ scripts and lending stuff from the library, I don’t think I bought any books.
Definitively didn't have to pay $700-$1200 per year for books, but we had a few rather expensive ones. Still have some --this one is great because the faux leather look with the embossed title makes your bookshelf look way serious.
Our professors/lecturers were usually pretty good about choosing affordable books, and making sure one could use older versions (as to make it possible to buy used). Hearing about the way students are forced into buying new expensive books unnecessarily ... I don't have a lot of happy thoughts for the people that enable that.
I seem to remember the books having a new edition every few years just so they can keep you from buying the used ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsdzWEZdblg
TLDW: When he was in college, he didn't want to shell out $300 for new books so he got used ones. There were homework tests in the book that he had to complete for grade by logging into the e-learning platform and writing question numbers with answers (ABCD) in there. He studied the chapter but only got 10% on the test. He figured out it's because the tests were updated, so he approached the teacher after a class and asked if there is an automated system for grading the test or if he grades it manually. The teacher said it's fully manual, so Louis asked him if instead of question numbers and answer letters he can type in questions and answers in full, since he has an older book. The teacher told him to buy the new edition or GTFO.
So he borrowed the new book from a friend and had it scanned and OCR-ed. He also had his old one OCR-ed for comparison. He found out the two books were 100% identical, cover to cover - with the sole exception of the order of answers on the chapter end tests. As in, the answers were identical, just in different order. That's when he realized it's all a scam and quit the college entirely.
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@dangeRuss the book companies run a homework service, where you do the homework in a crappy interface and it grades it for you automatically. Logging in requires a code, basically like a game download code. Proof of purchase of the book. They're one use, so reselling the used book is pointless, since you can't sell the code (which costs basically the same as book +code).
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@topspin said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Other than buying some copies of the professors’ scripts and lending stuff from the library, I don’t think I bought any books.
Definitively didn't have to pay $700-$1200 per year for books, but we had a few rather expensive ones. Still have some --this one is great because the faux leather look with the embossed title makes your bookshelf look way serious.
Our professors/lecturers were usually pretty good about choosing affordable books, and making sure one could use older versions (as to make it possible to buy used). Hearing about the way students are forced into buying new expensive books unnecessarily ... I don't have a lot of happy thoughts for the people that enable that.
I seem to remember the books having a new edition every few years just so they can keep you from buying the used ones.
When I was a college teacher (as a grad student, but responsible for the class), we vetted a new edition of the book. The only changes?
- online homework codes for old versions were no longer valid. And code-only purchases were only about $2 cheaper than book + code.
- they'd re-numbered the problems in some chapters. Meaning if you had an old edition and the instructions were to do problems X, Y, and Z...you'd do the wrong problems.
Textbook companies are the epitome of "exploitative business"
For this to work, you need complicit teachers who actually give a fuck about the publisher's paywalled tests. It's not just the textbook companies that are exploitative, it's the entire education industry.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
The teacher told him to buy the new edition or GTFO.
This is the part that pisses me off the most. For reference, I remember lecturers providing keys to remap chapters and exercises between editions.
We could buy at the university/student bookstore for whatever they'd purchase them at; for some books they'd buy enough copies to last a few years, working around that problem to some degree. Mind you, this was before online content really was a thing in textbooks
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@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@HardwareGeek said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Definitively didn't have to pay $700-$1200 per year for books, but we had a few rather expensive ones.
I had one in particular that I remember as (I think) the most expensive textbook I ever had to buy. In today's dollars, it would be about $100, but the internet tells me that textbook prices have gone up much more than general inflation, over 800%, so that book would cost around $350 today. For just one book. And more than just the cost itself, the class used only 4 chapters of the book (maybe 20-ish chapters total), so 80-ish% of the price was for parts of the book we never even looked at. (For the curious, it was Advanced Engineering Mathematics. We used it for Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, and a couple of other things I've completely forgotten, not that I ever used any of it after I graduated.)
As for used books, they were sometimes available, but between new editions, different books, and students keeping their books to use as references in future classes, the number available was pretty limited.
Which book is this that costs $350? I was able to find about 5 different books with that title and none seemed to be around $350.
I'm not sure, but I think this is the one. Of course, it wasn't the 10th edition 40 years ago.
There are a whole bunch of different prices listed in the rather confusing Amazon page; I'm not sure what the differences are. The low $47 price is obviously just to rent it for one semester (access codes and supplements may not be valid, so it may be useless for your class). There are 3 different prices for what appears to be purchase(?) of a hardback: $182, $283, and $546!!! The lower prices are used? Maybe? Or maybe they're regular-price rentals, but the $47 is discounted because the semester has already started? But clearly the "buy new" price is much higher than even my outrageous inflation estimate.
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@Zenith said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Are some people talking about credit hours and working forgetting that those 17-19 hours are scattered all over such that maintaining even a retail job while enrolled requires at least some flexibility on the part of the employer?
I was typically (at least junior and senior years) able to get day time classes on two days plus some that were at night. I worked in an ophthalmologist's office for a couple of years and then a gynecologist office part time.
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@Gąska agreed with the final conclusion. But I will say that having the (crappy) online homework check is good so students in a 200+ person class can actually get feedback before the tests. No way a live person is going to hand grade that unless you do what my undergrad did and hire 6-8 undergrad graders for each section. And then you're still limited to 4-5 problems a week.
Note: I don't think that the weight in the gradebook for these problems should be very high. Just a small (5% of total maybe) incentive to do the problems for practice.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
I'll note that this was ~15 years ago, so no. There weren't other good online platforms (and especially not ones aligned with the textbooks). And the textbooks were only ~$75.
And as for class size--my summer classes were small. The main semester sections (2/semester) of that class were 350 people each. That's what happens when it's a med school prereq at a large state flagship (~50k students). And I had one class as an undergrad that was ~1k people. That one didn't have homework or TAs or anything. Just 3 multiple-choice tests, each written by a different professor. Although...I don't think I bought the book for that one.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
Shit maybe TDWTF should create our own platform.
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@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
Shit maybe TDWTF should create our own platform.
Can't do worse than the ones out there. Seriously. There are many, but like all "educational" software, they suck. Horribly. Honestly, I did make one of my own for my own classes as a HS teacher. Wasn't very full-featured, but it did what I needed it to.
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@HardwareGeek said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Definitively didn't have to pay $700-$1200 per year for books, but we had a few rather expensive ones.
I had one in particular that I remember as (I think) the most expensive textbook I ever had to buy. In today's dollars, it would be about $100, but the internet tells me that textbook prices have gone up much more than general inflation, over 800%, so that book would cost around $350 today. For just one book. And more than just the cost itself, the class used only 4 chapters of the book (maybe 20-ish chapters total), so 80-ish% of the price was for parts of the book we never even looked at. (For the curious, it was Advanced Engineering Mathematics. We used it for Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, and a couple of other things I've completely forgotten, not that I ever used any of it after I graduated.)
As for used books, they were sometimes available, but between new editions, different books, and students keeping their books to use as references in future classes, the number available was pretty limited.
EE students are amongst the most exploited, for obvious reasons.
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@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
Shit maybe TDWTF should create our own platform.
OMGWTF:
THE DIDACTICIZATION
NoLet the dead remain in their gravesOlympiad of Misguided Geeks
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
That's what happens when it's a
medschoolprereq at a large state flagshipthat doesn't actually care about quality of education and is too cheap to hire appropriate number of teachers.In their defense, the students don't care about quality of education either. The entire system is completely wrong, down to students existing in the first place.
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@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
Shit maybe TDWTF should create our own platform.
Candidate Mettle is
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
That's what happens when it's a
medschoolprereq at a large state flagshipthat doesn't actually care about quality of education and is too cheap to hire appropriate number of teachers.In their defense, the students don't care about quality of education either. The entire system is completely wrong, down to students existing in the first place.
I'm in complete agreement about the bold section. The last part of that sentence I'm not sure what you mean, but to find out.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Can't do worse than the ones out there. Seriously. There are many, but like all "educational" software, they suck.
I graduated from uni long before there was online anything. (Email was barely usable for nerds, and not available at all for non-nerds.) But having watched my son use online educational tools, they do indeed suck, hard.
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@Benjamin-Hall I mean 70% of applicants should've never applied to any post-secondary school in the first place, and of the rest, 70% shouldn't be anywhere near an institution called "academia". Universities should be for those who actually want to pursue knowledge as their job or hobby, not train an average corporate Joe for average corporate job. The latter should be done by certification courses and specialty schools, or apprenticeships within the target company. That would make everyone's live much easier - the average Joes getting their education faster, better and cheaper; academic-oriented people not having to stress over grades so much; teachers not having to deal with uninterested and incapable students; businesses getting bigger supply of better qualified people whose education history actually means something. The only people who wouldn't benefit would be the leeches in school administrations, the leeches in loan institutions, and the leeches in textbook publishing.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
200+ person class
TRWTF
Anyway, there are so many online testing platforms nowadays that teachers don't have this excuse anymore. That class of yours? Collectively they paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for access codes alone, for that one class alone. There are good testing platforms, but none of them are $20,000/class good.
Shit maybe TDWTF should create our own platform.
Candidate Mettle is
This calls for an OMGWTF, the die is cast
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@HardwareGeek said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Can't do worse than the ones out there. Seriously. There are many, but like all "educational" software, they suck.
I graduated from uni long before there was online anything. (Email was barely usable for nerds, and not available at all for non-nerds.) But having watched my son use online educational tools, they do indeed suck, hard.
I've made award-winning educational software, in my callow youth. Indicating either that, it doesn't have to suck, or, that it sucks so systematically that awards are given out.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall I mean 70% of applicants should've never applied to any secondary school in the first place, and of the rest, 70% shouldn't be anywhere near an institution called "academia". Universities should be for those who actually want to pursue knowledge as their job or hobby, not train an average corporate Joe for average corporate job. The latter should be done by certification courses and specialty schools, or apprenticeships within the target company. That would make everyone's live much easier - the average Joes getting their education faster, better and cheaper; academic-oriented people not having to stress over grades so much; teachers not having to deal with uninterested and incapable students; businesses getting bigger supply of better qualified people whose education history actually means something. The only people who wouldn't benefit would be the leeches in school administrations, the leeches in loan institutions, and the leeches in textbook publishing.
In that case I 100% agree.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
I mean 70% of applicants should've never applied to any secondary school
I think you mean post-secondary school. Secondary school is high school (or middle school and high school; definitions vary somewhat), and attendance is mandatory pretty much everywhere, at least in first-world countries.
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@HardwareGeek yes, that. Although the value of high school for most people is dubious at best, too.
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@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@HardwareGeek said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@error said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@PotatoEngineer said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Back to the money part of this, if we're just saying "food should be free with existing taxation," that's trivially true: just take money from every other government program until the food-welfare is sufficiently funded.
If there's enough money, then everyone gets good food, too, with enough variety to supply every possible meal preference. And you can still implement market-like trading between suppliers (with vouchers) if you need a little invisible hand to make things more efficient. (Some food charities have such a market system with points; the various distribution places bid for the stuff they want to give to the homeless, based on the demands/preferences in the various different places.)
Mind you, the rest of the government programs might end up a wee bit underfunded, but doing food-only would be trivial.
Where would we find so much money?
Unrelated
The fine print at the bottom:
The source for this chart uses a definition of defense spending that is more broad than budget function 050 and defense discretionary spending.
I.e., the source for this chart uses a definition of defense spending that includes a lot of stuff that isn't really defense spending (but we won't tell you what or how much), at least for the US, but maybe not for other countries, because we (probably) rely on the official government-reported figures for a lot of them, because we
can't twist them to fit our narrative(probably) don't have access to the real spending numbers to redefine.USA! USA! USA!
We're number one!
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Can't do worse than the ones out there.
I see that you never used Moodle
Of course it's far from perfect, but it's pretty good.
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@TimeBandit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Can't do worse than the ones out there.
I see that you never used Moodle
Of course it's far from perfect, but it's pretty good.
Like all such things, it sucks. Been there, done that. Conservation of annoyance.
And an LMS is generally different than the "homework sites", although you can replicate some of the functionality.
If I, as a teacher who was also a grad student, had to manually load in all the questions, I'd only be able to ask a small fraction of the homework I really needed to. Because that's stupidly time consuming, and setting them up to auto-grade for anything but multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank/matching is obnoxious in the extreme (on the teacher's side). The "value" of the textbook ones is that you could just tell people "the assignment is $questionNumbers". And each one of those has random input numbers, which limits how much they can cheat. Doing that by hand is horrific, almost as much work as actually grading the homework by hand.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@TimeBandit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Can't do worse than the ones out there.
I see that you never used Moodle
Of course it's far from perfect, but it's pretty good.
Like all such things, it sucks. Been there, done that. Conservation of annoyance.
And an LMS is generally different than the "homework sites", although you can replicate some of the functionality.
If I, as a teacher who was also a grad student, had to manually load in all the questions, I'd only be able to ask a small fraction of the homework I really needed to. Because that's stupidly time consuming, and setting them up to auto-grade for anything but multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank/matching is obnoxious in the extreme (on the teacher's side). The "value" of the textbook ones is that you could just tell people "the assignment is $questionNumbers". And each one of those has random input numbers, which limits how much they can cheat. Doing that by hand is horrific, almost as much work as actually grading the homework by hand.
Any advancement in LMS? Are they all still terrible?
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@topspin said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@MrL said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
But we have to pay for it. I was talking about feeding for free. Like schools and colleges are free.
They are not and never will be.
They are where I live.
Only in the Free World. Some people have been trained to even deny its existence.
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@MrL said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
If there are enough resources in circulation to meet everybody needs
There's not enough and never will be.
Spoken like a 16yo on his first night out drinking. Most people know better around the time they finish high school.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@boomzilla said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@boomzilla this scheme doesn't even exist and yet you know exactly how it would work, down to what food will be available. And you say you're not clairvoyant.
Correct. I don't know what food, exactly, will be available, but since you've described a centrally planned menu, it will suck and most people will hate it, unless they have enough power to keep the good stuff for themselves.
History of school lunches shows otherwise. They always suck, but sometimes they suck much less. It was actually almost decent in years 2011-2018, even in the poorest of Chicago school districts (and you won't find many places in USA worse than poorest Chicago school districts).
And of course they suck infinitely less than the nonexistent ones that would otherwise be on the free-as-in-world menu of quite a few kids.
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@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@boomzilla said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
but since you've described a centrally planned menu,
To be fair, I don't think there was mention of a centrally planned menu, just that it would be "free". Why not a setup where one gets vouchers that can be used to get a meal at a place of choice? Those would ostensibly still compete with each other for customers...
So the motivation to make food as cheap and addictive as possible would still be there. That would work nicely—140 million obese USians can't be wrong.
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@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
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@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
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@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
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@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
Dunno, I haven't been in a Walmart in ages.
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@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
Dunno, I haven't been in a Walmart in ages.
I don't much care for Blue Bunny.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Not fun.
acknowledged, this is the correct usage.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@dangeRuss said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@cvi said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@topspin said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Other than buying some copies of the professors’ scripts and lending stuff from the library, I don’t think I bought any books.
Definitively didn't have to pay $700-$1200 per year for books, but we had a few rather expensive ones. Still have some --this one is great because the faux leather look with the embossed title makes your bookshelf look way serious.
Our professors/lecturers were usually pretty good about choosing affordable books, and making sure one could use older versions (as to make it possible to buy used). Hearing about the way students are forced into buying new expensive books unnecessarily ... I don't have a lot of happy thoughts for the people that enable that.
I seem to remember the books having a new edition every few years just so they can keep you from buying the used ones.
When I was a college teacher (as a grad student, but responsible for the class), we vetted a new edition of the book. The only changes?
- online homework codes for old versions were no longer valid. And code-only purchases were only about $2 cheaper than book + code.
- they'd re-numbered the problems in some chapters. Meaning if you had an old edition and the instructions were to do problems X, Y, and Z...you'd do the wrong problems.
Textbook companies are the epitome of "exploitative business"
For this to work, you need complicit teachers who actually give a fuck about the publisher's paywalled tests. It's not just the textbook companies that are exploitative, it's the entire education industry.
Nah, some rackets don't need total buy-in. The complicity gets pretty diffuse, for a lot of e.g. professors. Unless they write textbooks.
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@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes.
Haha you wish. The central hub's inventory changes every couple weeks and many items get permanently retired before the supply trucks even reach the stores. There's no guarantee even half of the items will be the same from one month to the next. And if a store manager wanted one of everything that's available at central hub, he'd need to become a central hub himself to have enough room.
Google keyword for today: lean tail.
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@Gąska said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes.
Haha you wish. The central hub's inventory changes every couple weeks and many items get permanently retired before the supply trucks even reach the stores. There's no guarantee even half of the items will be the same from one month to the next. And if a store manager wanted one of everything that's available at central hub, he'd need to become a central hub himself to have enough room.
Even if many contracts are long-term, that's what happens when you stock a couple hundred thousand different items. Of course they won't make a multi-year contract for stuff they sell very little of.
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@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
Durian (also called "stink fruit"). Millions of non-white people know that it has great taste.
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@Zenith said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
a $700-$1200 textbook bill
The other nice thing about maths. Many courses only had a syllabus, which we bought from the students' association at €5 a piece.
Though I was also on disability benefits at the time, so even if things had been expensive I wouldn't have noticed.
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@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
TDEMSYR. IIRC, this isn't the first time you've said this, either.
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@BernieTheBernie said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
Durian (also called "stink fruit"). Millions of non-white people know that it has great taste.
This does not sound like good ice cream.
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@boomzilla said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Zenith said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Are some people talking about credit hours and working forgetting that those 17-19 hours are scattered all over such that maintaining even a retail job while enrolled requires at least some flexibility on the part of the employer?
I was typically (at least junior and senior years) able to get day time classes on two days plus some that were at night. I worked in an ophthalmologist's office for a couple of years and then a gynecologist office part time.
Night classes? What are those?
Also on books, it was typical for me to spend about $500 per semester. I had one semester where it hit something like $800 because of this $200 chemistry book I had to buy. Cheapest book I ever had was Discrete Mathematics, self-published by two professors, and that still cost around $40.
The campus book store was like GameStop. If you had a $100 book, the used copy was $95 and you could sell it back for $5. I used to list them on Amazon or eBay but trying to get even $10 for any of them was impossible so I ended up just keeping them in a box somewhere. At least I got a ton of use out of my SQL book over the years.
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@Zenith said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@boomzilla said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Zenith said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
Are some people talking about credit hours and working forgetting that those 17-19 hours are scattered all over such that maintaining even a retail job while enrolled requires at least some flexibility on the part of the employer?
I was typically (at least junior and senior years) able to get day time classes on two days plus some that were at night. I worked in an ophthalmologist's office for a couple of years and then a gynecologist office part time.
Night classes? What are those?
My undergrad school had lots of classes that started at 5:30 or...8:10 and ran for 2.5 hours once per week. They'd typically have a 10 minute or so break in the middle.
For my masters degree I was working full time and took only night classes. But also a different school than undergrad, and I was only taking two or three (I think only one of three semesters I had to take three courses) per semester.
Also on books, it was typical for me to spend about $500 per semester. I had one semester where it hit something like $800 because of this $200 chemistry book I had to buy. Cheapest book I ever had was Discrete Mathematics, self-published by two professors, and that still cost around $40.
I can't remember how much I spent, but it wasn't that much. But I'm pretty sure it was a while before you did.
The campus book store was like GameStop. If you had a $100 book, the used copy was $95 and you could sell it back for $5. I used to list them on Amazon or eBay but trying to get even $10 for any of them was impossible so I ended up just keeping them in a box somewhere. At least I got a ton of use out of my SQL book over the years.
I kept all of my math books and sold most of my other books back. A few of the business ones I kept. I remember getting a bit better deal than that (depending on the condition of the book).
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@BernieTheBernie said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@LaoC said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@Gribnit said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
@e4tmyl33t said in Amazon has more stuff than it knows what to do with:
And why would it need to be a "menu" as such? Just arrange for weekly/bi-weekly deliveries of a bunch of vegetables, some varied meats, etc. and the people can make what they want with them.
Still fails. Central planning more granular than thevery high level (power of purse, contract onerousness, rights) is fail. It can't scale properly.
Hence the utter failure that is Walmart.
Fun fact--purchasing/stocking decisions are largely up to individual store owners (out of the pool of things corporate will supply). You get large variation even between stores in the same town
Out of the centrally planned "menu" that depends on often very long-term contracts with suppliers, yes. Of course. "Send 10,000 cans of baked beans to every store" is 1950s planning when telegraphing stocks and sales even on a weekly basis would have been far too much work but totally stupid today. Corporate still makes the decision to make say a new 5-year contract with Dell or take Tamagotchis off the menu. And importantly there's no market involved in the distribution of things within this 2M employee economy that's larger than some nation states.
What kind of ice cream can I get in the new world?
Durian (also called "stink fruit"). Millions of non-white people know that it has great taste.
It also gives tons of extra hearts.
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@boomzilla Failure in what sense? As a business, it's quite profitable; not a failure as a business. As a place for people to shop, it has good variety at reasonable prices; not a failure from the customers' viewpoint. As an attractor of people you'd really rather not meet while you're shopping, it's rather too successful. Crushing mom-and-pop competition? It's too successful at that, too. About the only way I can think of that is (sort of) a failure is their online shopping. It mostly works, but their fuzzy search and their concept of "related items" sometimes gives things that are not at all what you're looking for, seemingly random and arbitrary things are not available online, and the split between "Walmart grocery" and walmart.com is also seemingly arbitrary; I sometimes have to search the other half of the site for things I know they stock in the local store. And don't get me started on delivery of oversize items.