Amazon Cannot Fail

The world's largest online retail site, Amazon.com is growing and making money more than ever before. The holiday season is typically a huge selling month for the website, but this month in particular has been extremely kind to Amazon. A group of website attackers known as "anonymous" tried to take out Amazon.com recently, but failed miserably. Amazon's mainframe is so large that its virtually impossible to overflood with users. They have designed it so that there is enough extra space to handle millions and millions of shoppers at once. If the website were to go down for even a few minutes during the holiday season, Amazon could stand to lose millions of dollars. Thus, they are prepared to take on anything and will not be crashing anytime soon. Although I don't buy much at Amazon.com I know that its got my back if I ever need anything.


http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/09/technology/amazon_wikileaks_attack/index.htm

Life

http://www.funny.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Funny.woa/wa/funny?fn=CN3BC&Funny_Pictures=Life

Movie Monopoly

Over the past decade Netflix has been one of the most profitable websites on the internet. Stock prices have quadrupled in Netflix as it overtook all other movie businesses like blockbuster and Hollywood Video. The CEO of Timewarner, Jeffrey Bewkes, is not happy about the wild success of Netflix, as he believes it has taken away business from other video/movie associated companies. Netflix has accelerated the decline of DVD sales and essentially run cable television companies into the ground. Because Netflix offers all the movies that cable networks like Starz and Showtime would offer, people aren't subscribing to them.  Bewkes remarked that, "Once you put it on Netflix, you really can’t sell it anywhere else". I am a fairly frequent user of Netflix and have been using it since the beginning. It seems that many businesses these days are establishing monopolies in their sectors and the world is becoming run by a few different companies. This takes away some of the spirit of competition. Although I like Netflix, I don't want it to run other companies out of business.


 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.html?_r=1&ref=business

Jumping the Gun

Drug related violence has been increasing for years in Mexico due to the country's lack of stability in government and growing black market. Thousnads of drug related deaths are tallied up every year in Mexico and America is part of the problem. Federal authorities say that over 60,000 US guns have been siezed in Mexico over the past 4 years. Moreover, Texas has been the largest gun contributor out of all the states. 8 of the 12 largest gun sellers are located in Texas and have sold thousands of guns to drug lords in Mexico. Although highly contested by the NRA and other gun organizations, statistics show that 80 to 90% of the guns found in Mexico were originally sold in the United States. Executive director, Chris W. Cox, said that "to suggest that U.S gun laws are somehow to blame for drug cartel violence is a sad fantasy." No matter what he or anyone else believes, the evidence is there. We are definitely contributing to the violence in Mexico and we need to stop immediately before the situation gets even more out of hand.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010121203267

Overworked and Under Appreciated

A new documentary called "Race to Nowhere" is bringing up some controversial questions about school and the workload given to students. Although not widely released, the movie has been steadily rising on peoples "must see" list for the holidays. The film talks about various students who are dealing with the day to day pressures of homework, work, and outside activities that take up most of their day. One high school senior remarked, "Everyone expects us to be superheroes". In today's competitive society it is getting harder and harder to get into college and get a decent job. If the economy continues to fall, it could be like this for a while. As long as their are more and more people entering the workforce, the competition will remain the same.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/education/09nowhere.html?ref=us