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Fortune Takes a Look at Bram Cohen
jackstack writes "Fortune has an interesting article about bittorrent creator Bram Cohen. 'Right now I'm the CEO because I don't trust anyone else to be the CEO,' Bram says. The article goes into some interesting detail about Bram's state of mind, his poor history in college, and gives a glimpse of what it's like to go from being an unknown, brilliant geek - to the CEO of an $8.75 Million startup company."
Bandwidth costs money, and offering, say, Linux ISO's is expensive. But, if people opt in (BitTorrent) each person is joining a community and helping out with the cost of bandwidth - especially those who are accessing via an ISP and not through work.
It's the same level of cooperation that makes OSS so special.
I may be a good way to share files, but I'm afraid the investors are throwing their money away. It's like trying to make money off of FTP.
How can this company be worth 8.75 million. What does it do that is worth that much a year? As far as I can see nothing. The only "product" it has it gives away for free. If it started charging a dozen open source versions would appear in it's place. Even if they didn't the system can be copied by others for virtually nothing. What is it with these really high value estimations?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Why should he hand over his title to some facist punk that will bank on his hard earned work. He's the brilliant guy that came up with this, he should run the company as he sees fits. Sometimes it's not about profit, but about ideals and vision.
Life is not for the lazy.
The job of a CEO is to provide direction and strategy for an organization. I would say that maybe he needs a PR person. He seems to be doing quite well as the CEO.
The other thing that has me thinking - who diagnosed his illness?
I've met quite a few people who said that they had various illnesses. When I asked them about the diagnosis and what the physician (or some other qualified expert) said, they don't say anything about an expert diagnosis: just something vague. I don't know about him, but I think a lot of folks use popular illnesses as an excuse for their own shortcomings or as an excuse for not doing something that they're not interested in doing.
Forgive my spelling, but I have spellexia.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
there's always been smart people who can do complex topological analysis in their head but can't balance their checkbook
likewise, there have always been people whose minds always flit from one subject to the next every second- in other words, attention deficit disorder
but now we have these buzzwords, asperpgers and ADD and others, and people think its some miraculous discovery, and its all they talk about and they act like it explains all sorts of behavior
but it's just a fad, and meanwhile, the conditions have always been there, always will be there, and those who have these conditions are no more special or less special than the rest of us
cohen is a smart guy, and he can concentrate on a complex math problem, and he likes to do it, that's all, that's it
i'm just so sick of everyone jumping on the buzzword bandwagon, it doesn't mean anything
there once was a time in the 1800s when everyone thought phrenology was the end-all explanation of character and intelligence
it's long forgotten, like the racist pseudoscience it was
meanwhile, in a hundred years, when our language and our attention isn't controlled by the marketing department of large pharmaceutical companies, our hypochondriacal way of looking at our mental differences will have moved onto the next stupid fad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why should he hand over his title to some facist punk that will bank on his hard earned work. He's the brilliant guy that came up with this, he should run the company as he sees fits. Sometimes it's not about profit, but about ideals and vision.
Yeah - because when someone has ideals and vision and doesn't care about profits, they DEFINITELY wanna hook up with venture financing people. I hear those big money guys are all about dreams and couldn't give a fuck about profits.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I mean, after all, anybody can set up a Web site. How could a company possibly make money doing that??
Breakfast served all day!
Since he is a grown-up, don't you think he's capable of making his own decisions about who he wants to have running his company?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Ah. The Barbara Walters of business magazines. You want a puff piece, read Fortune. You want news, read Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or even the Economist.
As a founder of a funded startup myself I hope he suceeds, but statistically he won't. Maybe i'm alone here, but i'm having a hardtime envisioning the business model of such a company (and doubt his ability to lead it to profitability). Sure bittorrent is a neat technology: but its just that a technology, and an open one too. It appears to be a long shot, and thats why funding came from venture capitalists. From most slashdotters POV i'm sure that sounds awesome until you realize what accepting venture capital is typically about: 90%+ stock takeovers with rider clauses allowing the investment firm first dibs on any money withdrawn from the company. I hope he hires someone to run the company that can translate whatever products he comes up with into something that can actually be sold.
if sign.nil? Sig.new
Sometimes fame outweighs charisma. If Linus hadn't invented linux, do you honestly think he would be a spokesperson for Transmetia?
"doctors"
everything after that is a mistake
i'm talking about personality, not medical conditions, and the way society talks about each other
if we were in a hospital, talking about patients with liver disease or cancer, you would be 100% right
but we're not, we're talking about this hychondriac way people talk about simple personality differences
the world i am after is a world with more tolerant of more ranges of personality differences
as cohen is a ready example of, it is not all negative to have a quirky personality
but in a world you are living in, where anyone vaguely outside the norm is diagnosed with a medical system, we are talking about a world that is promoting sameness and conformity
at the loss of what?
at the loss of people like cohen!
so that is why i find it disgusting that anyone, including cohen (we're all hypochondriacs... read any psychology text book describing mental disorders and i defy not to say at one paragraph or another "hey! i've felt like that before!"), should think that just because he can concentrate hard and can't tune into what people are saying that great, is someone with a medical disorder
same with ADD
what if ritalin and prozac and other drugs are destroying the cohens of this world?
is ADD all negative? well, is asperger's all negative? what great writers, comedians, directors, etc. have been destroyed because they were treated with drugs, someone with an ability to focus on other things than the here and now- that's all negative? well i can describe asperger's in dire negative ways... but cohen is a shining example of why its not all negative!
so how about LESS medicalization of personality types, and MORE tolerance and acceptance of a range of quirks?
because the only people who win in the world you describe- the medicalization of personalities, are pharmaceutical companies, who want to prescribe us a pill for every perceived quirk of character that someone can pin down
it's disgusting, it will turn us into a society of robots so that some pharmaceutical company has some more cash in its bottom line
well how many riches are lost when our picassos and shakespeares and einsteins and cohens and hitchcocss are medically treated into personality sameness?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For a while, whenever a similar story would come up - there would be a myriad of posts ala "I like technology and am socially awkward, therefore I must have Aspergers!".
Why would they make the claim? Probably it gives them an "excuse". It's no longer "their fault" that they're clueless when talking to people.
Of course one post on Slashdot does not equate to seeking out and joining one of your groups. I have no doubt that your claim is true.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
"In mid-October, Apple unveiled its long-rumored video iPod and started making some TV downloads and Pixar shorts available through its popular iTunes service. Navin says that the Google and Apple moves are both competition, but that BitTorrent's market will offer much more than just movies and TV shows. Plus, he speculates that Apple is paying "an astronomical price for bandwidth."
For anyone big, bandwidth becomes more and more of a non-issue. Only the little guys actually pay a significant amount for it.
Having worked for a web hosting company that went from small, averaging only 50mbits/sec in total, to over 800mbits/sec their overall bandwidth costs actually went DOWN. Why? Because once they started pushing over 100-200mbits/sec they could sign free, or next to free peering agreements with major Tier 1 providers. As long as you don't piss them off, and the agreement continues to be mutually benficial you get "free" bandwidth.
I'm sure Apple and any other big players pay fractions of a cent on the dollar for bandwidth.
I still believe Cohen's company can help out the little guys sell their wares, at least until they push enough bandwidth that it becomes cheaper to host the content themselves. I doubt you'll ever see Apple or the MPAA paying him money to host content though.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
As an Oakland resident who commutes daily around the Bay Area, I'd like to point out the existence of a very advanced technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
It uses gears to commute energies that are intrinsicaly present wherever the user is (provide they're metabollically prepared) to propel them forward at great speeds.
Given the combined utilty of this elegant technology and the Bays' extensive public transport system a car can be easily viewed as more of a liability in terms of cost and convienence when the factors of parking and gas prices ( ~ US $3.00 'round here) are factored. In my group of friends and aquaintances a good half, if not more, do not own cars. The brute force approach to transportaion (ie. internal combustion) seems to me a poor method for general use when the energies spent are overwhelmingly directed at transporting the system itself rather than it's passengers and payload. I was in Berlin last year where it is very common to see people using large hand carts to move heavy loads about. That is also a large cosmopolitan city where cars can be extremely inconvienent for everyday use. I'm no luddite, but the perception that combustion engines are a technical advancement over alternatives like sails on boats or gears on feet always seemed strange to me.
Sorry, but how is it his fault that your ISP can't handle the amount of data that its customers are trying to access? I'm trying not to have an "IGMSFY" attitude, but honestly, I don't see the logic in your statement.