After reading the article, the only "evidence" that the Freemium model does not work is that free users that got his "thank you" email flagged him spam. I bet he also attempted an upselling on that thank you email. People that get stuff for free tend to be very picky about getting emails even reminding them they can get a paid version.
Anyways, what he described is not even "fremium"; it’s a free edition of the site and a paid edition of the site. Freemium is a model where the product is entirely free and additional gimmicks or features are unlocked by micro-transactions (like 99c for extra Santa card layouts.)
It’s sad that anyone who makes a web service thinks they don’t have to, and as soon as they get 10 more users than they tested their service with the entire thing falls apart and they can’t scale it up to manage users. All they can think of is to try to optimize code here and there, but that has its limits and eventually you will need a system that can handle the scaling demand.
“Scalability” is not about being able to “be as big as facebook”, it’s about being able to handle increased user demands, be it seasonal or popularity based.
Actually.... the summary does mention that the lack of open source code from Facebook and Google is "hindering open source development."
He may be question the usefulness of Facebook being open source and why would it "hinder" anything.
Still a flawed observation that I replied in another post, but at least it seems he did read enough of the summary (i.e. all of it, not just the title) to jump to his argument.
There is a lot of point. Few online services can handle the level of activity Facebook handles every minute. It's not just about tossing more hardware at it either; it's not easy to make such a scalable system.
Open sourcing Facebook gives developers access to the custom code that allows them to handle all this, making it easier for small startups to jump into large service hosting solutions.
Also, not sure what the summary means with the last statement. It is my understanding that Facebook HAS open sourced their server code (very likely as a jab at Google who, despite being "Open" would never dare give any competitor access to their scaling server code.)
One thing to keep in consideration.......sometimes people who've been on low-fat diets for a long time, get kind of fat-starved. That is, some people consume less than 20% of their calories in fat for many years, and then, suddenly when they start eating more fat, they feel really good. Finally their body is getting what they need.
I have never, ever, been able to do a low fat diet so that would not be my case. I have attempted low calorie diets, but never low fat ones (despite thinking they were bad for me at one point.)
Evolutionarily speaking, harvesting grain has been a very tiny chunk of our lifetimes.
Maybe, but my understanding is that most hunter/gathering types eat mainly wild plants, and some meat. It's apparently not very easy to catch animals.
Things are a bit more complex than that. We were hunters, and our primary food goal was meat. But, crazy as it may sound, we didn't eat every day, nor multiple times a day. The ability of the human body to accumulate body fat allowed for small groups to eat, gain some fat weight, and survive on it a day or two if hunt failed.
I seen documentaries of some of the few hunter/gatherer tribes left in the world, and how they still survive just doing this. It's not hard for them to hunt down prey and have food, as long as the tribes remain small. Their hunts involve mostly stamina "battles" more than just pure hunt. They will, in groups, keep an antelope running in circles for long enough, until it's body overheats and goes into a state of shock, not able to run any further. Human sweat mechanics keep the human hunters active without overheating, and once this point is reached, spears are launched and dinner the dinner carried back to the tribe.
If anything, you may argue that such a society may be in more of a handicap today than back then, since human expansion has slowly made it harder for them to find viable hunting grounds or even a place to live while preserving these traditions. Back in the day, most humans lived in similar, perhaps smaller tribes without worries of cities and governments destroying their jungles.
No, we all dont know (unless by "we all", you mean a very small circle of people that actually know.)
There are a LOT of people that believe in the theory of evolution but are still a bit ignorant on it, and think it is about adaptive mutations. Like exposing you to cyanide will mutate you into a cyanide imune human, not understanding that any humans that happen to survive cyanide poisoning happened to, by just random birth "mutations" or "defects" or "features" be able to survive the poisoning.
Evolution is about the extintion of huge chunks of the species, distilling them, so to speak. (not re-explaining it for you, but for those that still think it's about living organizms mutating to survive.)
I'm disgusted by the fat-bodies. You should be able to run a mile easily.
Additional thing I forgot to mention earlier:
Being athletic or thin does not make you immune to Type-2 Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes. Diabetes is not about fat, it’s about blood sugar levels, and thanks to the American diet, even athletes with near zero body fat are being diagnosed with diabetes.
It may be worth your time to learn how diabetes works, and how it can destroy your later life. If you actually have your diets consists mostly of complex carbs like breads and pastas and avoid meats and fats, I also highly recommend you have a quick blood sugar test.
Diabetes is killing America faster than Aids and Cancer. We really have to stop it, and we stop it by lowering, or preferably eliminating, our complex carb intake.
Quarters? You being too generous... you have to give it to them in a MIX of quarters and nickel. Give it only in one coin type and some one there may quickly realize they just have to weight them to know how much you are giving them.
"Somewhat healthy" does not make sense and does not fit the description you give. "Somewhat healthy" is like saying "barely acceptably healthy", it's what a doctor would say if he told you he won’t be sending you to the hospital but you need to fix things. It can also apply to anyone that’s extremely sick, but "somewhat healthy enough" to go to work.
What you describe in your example, unless you are skimming on some cancer, is just plain out healthy, not "somewhat healthy."
As for calorie count, I won’t get into it because this thread is full of posts with good information on it already, dig the tree. But not all calories are equal, they are not all just counted, your body is not a calculator. Some nutrients may be ignored by your digestive system if unneeded or over-provided; others will be immediately processed no matter how much you grouch on them.
1) The increase is nowhere near 2 bucks, nor is it to all transactions (what I have heard is that it went up for transactions under 10 dollars for small name credit cards) 2) EVEN if it was insanely high, you seriously saying they deserve to charge 2 bucks on $69-$100 (typical one line account) bills when other areas guble up the cost as long as you spend more than $10 bucks? 3) This is not the corner market, these guys have much more bargaining power and you can be sure, they get better swipe rates from their providers (if its not directly from Visa) than the small business down the street.
There is no apologizing for Verizion in this one unless you represent Verizon.
There is nothing smart about evolution; this is not "insects evolving to become immune." None of these poisons are 100% effective (not the ones we think can't kill us overnight anyways.) If there is a 1% survival rate, due to random variations throughout the species, all we do is drive all other members of the species extinct and give room for the very tiny minority to reproduce freely, without food competition. Given insect rapid generation cycles, it can take less than a year, or a handful of years tops, for the insecticides to become useless.
Worse of all: we will keep using the poisons, despite potential slow and cumulative human side effects.
The fee is waived if you pay by electronic check or auto pay. This only effects last minute payments.
This applies to ANY payment with credit cards or check cards (VISA ATMs that take money directly from your account.) It has nothing to do with the payment being a last minute payment or not.
I think they already charge a "service fee" at stores for paying there (i know other carriers do.) If so, then you are paying 2 bucks for the convenience of not paying a higher "service fee":P
Doubt it had anything to do with them trying to "recoup" anything. They just noticed how many people pay online and figured "hey, if half our customers pay online... we can get an extra 70.8 million a month by charging them 2 extra bucks for the privilege of paying us! That extra $212.4 million per quarter will look very nice in our quarterly reports!"
Would be even better to have a Windows Phone 7 like demo mode. I have not played with it but hear every app (or at least every game) has a demo mode. It shuts down or something after the time limit is up and you must buy at that point. I think this is also something the developer can't opt out off. His game (or app if it applies to all apps) will always have that demo mode available.
I think that approach is much more fair than either, Apple's ticket based request or Google's 15 minute window.
I don't think I would like the automatic formula, though. It's very likely if it was implemented, Apple would drop the ability to get a refund by support request. At least now, you have enough time to struggle with any installation issues you may face (like bandwidth speed or wifi interruptions that force you to continue download later and lose your refund window.)
Apple does reserve the right to not provide a refund. If you give them an issue, they are likely to test for it and see if it's a real problem. For instance, if you say the game crashes at startup in your iPhone 3Gs, they will test for exactly that. If it's not true, they won't give you the refund. They don't necessarily get back to you to inform you the state of the claim.
I think you don't have to just have technical issues, though. I think something like "purchased in iTunes, didn't realize it did not support 2nd gen iPhone, can't install" may be enough, but keep in mind Apple knows what devices you have used with your AppleID.
I am not sure if extreme dissatisfaction is considered a valid reason.
In the Android Market you get 15 minutes to requst a refund. In the iOS App Store, you can request a refund by reporting a problem, and writtng to Apple that you want a refund and the reasons for the refund. It's not as quick and automated, nor obvious, as the Android Market, but they give you up to 90 days to do this (or maybe 30 days... not 100% sure now.).
If you are on an iPhone, just go to the app page, report a problem, and request a refund. Just make sure to explain why (like app does not run on my phone/just crashes/etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone that has ever had a toy produced on his likeliness does. Usually actors in movies that are fit for video game and toy merchandizing.
After reading the article, the only "evidence" that the Freemium model does not work is that free users that got his "thank you" email flagged him spam. I bet he also attempted an upselling on that thank you email. People that get stuff for free tend to be very picky about getting emails even reminding them they can get a paid version.
Anyways, what he described is not even "fremium"; it’s a free edition of the site and a paid edition of the site. Freemium is a model where the product is entirely free and additional gimmicks or features are unlocked by micro-transactions (like 99c for extra Santa card layouts.)
Anyways, non-story, yada yada.
A new age of violin destruction begins!
Oh nohes!!! Where am I going to play my Atari 2600 then?!?!?!?
Ehm.... I already stated that... and it's what I was refering to by saying "Still a flawed observation that I replied in another post"
It’s sad that anyone who makes a web service thinks they don’t have to, and as soon as they get 10 more users than they tested their service with the entire thing falls apart and they can’t scale it up to manage users. All they can think of is to try to optimize code here and there, but that has its limits and eventually you will need a system that can handle the scaling demand.
“Scalability” is not about being able to “be as big as facebook”, it’s about being able to handle increased user demands, be it seasonal or popularity based.
Actually.... the summary does mention that the lack of open source code from Facebook and Google is "hindering open source development."
He may be question the usefulness of Facebook being open source and why would it "hinder" anything.
Still a flawed observation that I replied in another post, but at least it seems he did read enough of the summary (i.e. all of it, not just the title) to jump to his argument.
There is a lot of point. Few online services can handle the level of activity Facebook handles every minute. It's not just about tossing more hardware at it either; it's not easy to make such a scalable system.
Open sourcing Facebook gives developers access to the custom code that allows them to handle all this, making it easier for small startups to jump into large service hosting solutions.
Also, not sure what the summary means with the last statement. It is my understanding that Facebook HAS open sourced their server code (very likely as a jab at Google who, despite being "Open" would never dare give any competitor access to their scaling server code.)
One thing to keep in consideration.......sometimes people who've been on low-fat diets for a long time, get kind of fat-starved. That is, some people consume less than 20% of their calories in fat for many years, and then, suddenly when they start eating more fat, they feel really good. Finally their body is getting what they need.
I have never, ever, been able to do a low fat diet so that would not be my case. I have attempted low calorie diets, but never low fat ones (despite thinking they were bad for me at one point.)
Evolutionarily speaking, harvesting grain has been a very tiny chunk of our lifetimes.
Maybe, but my understanding is that most hunter/gathering types eat mainly wild plants, and some meat. It's apparently not very easy to catch animals.
Things are a bit more complex than that. We were hunters, and our primary food goal was meat. But, crazy as it may sound, we didn't eat every day, nor multiple times a day. The ability of the human body to accumulate body fat allowed for small groups to eat, gain some fat weight, and survive on it a day or two if hunt failed.
I seen documentaries of some of the few hunter/gatherer tribes left in the world, and how they still survive just doing this. It's not hard for them to hunt down prey and have food, as long as the tribes remain small. Their hunts involve mostly stamina "battles" more than just pure hunt. They will, in groups, keep an antelope running in circles for long enough, until it's body overheats and goes into a state of shock, not able to run any further. Human sweat mechanics keep the human hunters active without overheating, and once this point is reached, spears are launched and dinner the dinner carried back to the tribe.
If anything, you may argue that such a society may be in more of a handicap today than back then, since human expansion has slowly made it harder for them to find viable hunting grounds or even a place to live while preserving these traditions. Back in the day, most humans lived in similar, perhaps smaller tribes without worries of cities and governments destroying their jungles.
I'm sure these "other clients" are similar to the Mayor of Boston.
I think his other clients ARE the last 5 Mayors of Boston.
we all know how it works
No, we all dont know (unless by "we all", you mean a very small circle of people that actually know.)
There are a LOT of people that believe in the theory of evolution but are still a bit ignorant on it, and think it is about adaptive mutations. Like exposing you to cyanide will mutate you into a cyanide imune human, not understanding that any humans that happen to survive cyanide poisoning happened to, by just random birth "mutations" or "defects" or "features" be able to survive the poisoning.
Evolution is about the extintion of huge chunks of the species, distilling them, so to speak. (not re-explaining it for you, but for those that still think it's about living organizms mutating to survive.)
I'm disgusted by the fat-bodies. You should be able to run a mile easily.
Additional thing I forgot to mention earlier:
Being athletic or thin does not make you immune to Type-2 Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes. Diabetes is not about fat, it’s about blood sugar levels, and thanks to the American diet, even athletes with near zero body fat are being diagnosed with diabetes.
Read this article, not for me but for your own good:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24716880/ns/health-diabetes/t/even-thin-person-can-get-diabetes/
It may be worth your time to learn how diabetes works, and how it can destroy your later life. If you actually have your diets consists mostly of complex carbs like breads and pastas and avoid meats and fats, I also highly recommend you have a quick blood sugar test.
Diabetes is killing America faster than Aids and Cancer. We really have to stop it, and we stop it by lowering, or preferably eliminating, our complex carb intake.
Quarters? You being too generous... you have to give it to them in a MIX of quarters and nickel. Give it only in one coin type and some one there may quickly realize they just have to weight them to know how much you are giving them.
Explain to me how this doesn't make sense.
"Somewhat healthy" does not make sense and does not fit the description you give. "Somewhat healthy" is like saying "barely acceptably healthy", it's what a doctor would say if he told you he won’t be sending you to the hospital but you need to fix things. It can also apply to anyone that’s extremely sick, but "somewhat healthy enough" to go to work.
What you describe in your example, unless you are skimming on some cancer, is just plain out healthy, not "somewhat healthy."
As for calorie count, I won’t get into it because this thread is full of posts with good information on it already, dig the tree. But not all calories are equal, they are not all just counted, your body is not a calculator. Some nutrients may be ignored by your digestive system if unneeded or over-provided; others will be immediately processed no matter how much you grouch on them.
... do you work for Verizon?
1) The increase is nowhere near 2 bucks, nor is it to all transactions (what I have heard is that it went up for transactions under 10 dollars for small name credit cards)
2) EVEN if it was insanely high, you seriously saying they deserve to charge 2 bucks on $69-$100 (typical one line account) bills when other areas guble up the cost as long as you spend more than $10 bucks?
3) This is not the corner market, these guys have much more bargaining power and you can be sure, they get better swipe rates from their providers (if its not directly from Visa) than the small business down the street.
There is no apologizing for Verizion in this one unless you represent Verizon.
There is nothing smart about evolution; this is not "insects evolving to become immune." None of these poisons are 100% effective (not the ones we think can't kill us overnight anyways.) If there is a 1% survival rate, due to random variations throughout the species, all we do is drive all other members of the species extinct and give room for the very tiny minority to reproduce freely, without food competition. Given insect rapid generation cycles, it can take less than a year, or a handful of years tops, for the insecticides to become useless.
Worse of all: we will keep using the poisons, despite potential slow and cumulative human side effects.
The fee is waived if you pay by electronic check or auto pay. This only effects last minute payments.
This applies to ANY payment with credit cards or check cards (VISA ATMs that take money directly from your account.) It has nothing to do with the payment being a last minute payment or not.
I think they already charge a "service fee" at stores for paying there (i know other carriers do.) If so, then you are paying 2 bucks for the convenience of not paying a higher "service fee" :P
I am not sure about verizon, but in the past I seen carriers charge (in the US) an extra "service fee" for paying at a store.
This may be them just closing "fee avoidance loopholes" :P
Doubt it had anything to do with them trying to "recoup" anything. They just noticed how many people pay online and figured "hey, if half our customers pay online... we can get an extra 70.8 million a month by charging them 2 extra bucks for the privilege of paying us! That extra $212.4 million per quarter will look very nice in our quarterly reports!"
Thats not much help if you are dealing with a scammer, or some one that intentionally pushed crap with pretty screenshots, though.
Would be even better to have a Windows Phone 7 like demo mode. I have not played with it but hear every app (or at least every game) has a demo mode. It shuts down or something after the time limit is up and you must buy at that point. I think this is also something the developer can't opt out off. His game (or app if it applies to all apps) will always have that demo mode available.
I think that approach is much more fair than either, Apple's ticket based request or Google's 15 minute window.
I don't think I would like the automatic formula, though. It's very likely if it was implemented, Apple would drop the ability to get a refund by support request. At least now, you have enough time to struggle with any installation issues you may face (like bandwidth speed or wifi interruptions that force you to continue download later and lose your refund window.)
Apple does reserve the right to not provide a refund. If you give them an issue, they are likely to test for it and see if it's a real problem. For instance, if you say the game crashes at startup in your iPhone 3Gs, they will test for exactly that. If it's not true, they won't give you the refund. They don't necessarily get back to you to inform you the state of the claim.
I think you don't have to just have technical issues, though. I think something like "purchased in iTunes, didn't realize it did not support 2nd gen iPhone, can't install" may be enough, but keep in mind Apple knows what devices you have used with your AppleID.
I am not sure if extreme dissatisfaction is considered a valid reason.
In the Android Market you get 15 minutes to requst a refund.
In the iOS App Store, you can request a refund by reporting a problem, and writtng to Apple that you want a refund and the reasons for the refund. It's not as quick and automated, nor obvious, as the Android Market, but they give you up to 90 days to do this (or maybe 30 days... not 100% sure now.).
If you are on an iPhone, just go to the app page, report a problem, and request a refund. Just make sure to explain why (like app does not run on my phone/just crashes/etc.)
Apple will get you your money back.