Last week I broke in my new DVD player by ordering a couple DVD
movies from
http://www.kozmo.com/ , which rents DVDs and VHS
movies for $3.79 and delivers them for free within an hour
(or later, if you like.)
To return movies, you can either drop them into bins they have
located around the city, or call them to arrange for them to be
picked up, for which they charge $1.
They also deliver video games, music, books, junk food, and misc
drugstore-type stuff.
Pretty cool, especially since I don't own a car and live an
agonizing 12-minute walk away from the nearest video store.
I don't see how they can be making much money at these prices.
Maybe they're just looking to build a customer base or loyalty,
or trying to lose as much money as possible like all other .com's.
In any case, it's a great time to be a consumer!
I think about a decade ago I had an idea for a generic delivery
service that would buy anything you want from any store and
deliver it to you for a small fee. I'm still waiting for that
one. (what, me lazy!? Fortunately laziness is a virtue for
programmers, heh, heh.)
[ I just did a quick search to see where that meme came from, and
found:
perl man page:
> NOTES
> The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it."
> Divining how many more is left as an exercise to the
> reader.
>
> The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness,
> Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
and on
http://hiro.protagonist.net/perl/virtue.html :
> Laziness, Impatience, Hubris
>
> According to Perl folklore, the three great virtues of a
> programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris, in that order.
> Randal Schwartz explains, in The Camel book:
>
> LAZINESS: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce
> overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving
> programs that other people will find useful, and document what
> you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.
> Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
>
> IMPATIENCE: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy.
> This makes you write programs that don't just react to your
> needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least that pretend to.
> Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.
>
> HUBRIS: Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for.
> Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs
> that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the
> third great virtue of a programmer.
though I guess it probably predates Perl. ]
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/