I work for a newspaper company... There is no money in journalism... What other ideas are out there to keep news journalism profitable?
I'm curious - one of the things I have heard said about newspapers is that they gave up journalism in the 80's when they started ripping each other's content and getting their feeds from AP, cutting their stable of beat journalists.
Do you see that as a valid criticism, or does your newspaper still invest the same amount of resources in critical, objective, investigative journalism as it used to?
The process of R2-45 specifically pertains to shooting the target with a Colt.45 pistol, causing the victim's "thetan" to leave the body (exteriorization)
Will that work with my Kimber 1911 or do I have to find an original Colt Government Model to destroy my thetan with?;)
Knowing Scientology, you need a very particular custom Kimber that can only be purchased from the CoS for a cost about five times that of the fanciest race gun you've ever seen.
Nah - they wouldn't use Kimbers - that would show on the bottom line. I'm thinking Hi-Point.
That's also the predominate difference between Scientology and real religions - Scientology is better with the financial side of the operation.:)
You can have my online freedom when you pry it from my cold, dead, CPU.
Number 1: You cannot stop me from using encryption without denying me access to microchips. I'll run it on Atmel AVR chips if I have to.
Number 2: You cannot stop me from sending encrypted data, unless you stop me from sending data. I can hide it in DNS queries if I have to.
Number 3: I'm a real nice guy, I don't want to fight this fight, and I pay for my copyrighted materials.
Number 4: Don't fuck with me. I fuck back.
I understand that the entertainment industry is going through some challenges right now, and that there will be winners and losers, and that Sony will probably fall on the loser side. But you cannot take my freedom (read: it is not possible). The harder you try, the worse it will get for everyone.
Not sure if you already have radio-controlled airplane experience. If you do not, I have a very solid recommendation for you:
A world-class starter platform for both learning to fly and lifting is the Slow Stick. It is one of the most popular planes with RC hackers, is cheap as dirt, has solid lifting potential (and upgrades can make it a real monster), and has lots of commercially available upgrade parts.
I'd go with a slow stick glider, and add a cheap brushless motor for starters (in fact, that's precisely what I have about six feet behind me for my first aerial photography platform). That will give you a good mix of cheap and solid lifting potential.
As for the forum, Slashdot is a good place to start for all things geeky, but the specialist forums you're looking for are at RCGroups:
Admit your noob-ness, ask for advice, be respectful, weather the occasional ornery response with good humor, and you can learn everything you want to know at RC Groups.
As an example, Grimes assumes an eight-character password, with complexity enabled, a 94-symbol character set, and 90 days between password changes. Such a policy, typical for many organizations, would require attackers to make only 65 guesses per minute to break -- not at all hard to accomplish, Grimes writes.
90 * 24 * 60 * 65 = 8,424,000 8 ^ 8 = 16,777,216
So if you used an 8 character set, 8 characters wide, you'd get broken by Roger's attack. And you'd be an idiot.
Dictionary attacks? Ask yourself this: What other attack vectors do you open up by using this fame-monger's advice on how to mitigate dictionary attacks? Does Roger address that concern? Might that be because he doesn't know what he's talking about, and is more concerned with getting column inches and his face on your computer screen than he is with security?
As always, I love you dearly with all my heart and remember to tell drinkyurine that I miss him. Please accept my apologies for such a bad summary and don't let this obstruct our friendship which is sometimes as delicate as a flower covered in dew on a crisp summer morn.
1. Probably the largest developer base short of Javascript. 2. Unemployment is through the roof. 3. Corporations looking for ways to cut costs. 4. Open Source hackers continue their enjoyment of food and shelter. 5. Oracle got Sun for pennies.
If this was your idea, Mr. Ellison, take another sailboat out of petty cash. You've earned it.
A judge used the term "metadata" correctly. That is a good technical concept to grasp. We geeks and our friends like NYCL (who may also be a geek - not trying to exclude) have been bandying it about for years, but to 99% of the population it is a pretty foreign term.
Each example like this implies that the judicial is growing more familiar with technical concepts. That makes me happy.:)
For most people on slashdot, the RIAA is just a justification to make themselves feel better about downloading instead of buying.
Oh - and on that. My first reaction was, "fuck'em, those people are assholes."
But, then, copyright is supposed to be a bargain struck between the public which grants a fiat monopoly and the individual who benefits from it. Copyright was a pretty darned fair balance at one time -- but is it still? If the RIAA and Disney have purchased changes in the law to circumvent the bargain that copyright was meant to be, is there no understanding when the other side retaliates?
I'm not saying where I stand -- as I noted in my post I deleted all my infringing content back in 1999. But I have spent many hours considering the balance of copyright, the endless extensions thereof, and what that implies for the person on the other side of the teeter-totter. And I think everyone has to do that part -- the deep consideration -- if they want to hold a well-reasoned opinion on the matter.
Which leads me back to thinking those people are assholes -- because I figure most of them haven't really gone through the deep consideration part.
But then, the effectiveness of tit-for-tat in game theory isn't just theory. It's what any organic system will naturally evolve. Thinking the gov't, courts, RIAA, and Orrin Hatch can stop it is to ignore the seismic power of organic systems. Which is why I don't worry about it too much. They'll all get ground to dust eventually, on this matter. It's only a question of how many innocents like you get caught in the crossfire while they attempt to defend their hopeless position.
Why buy no CDs at all, instead of buying from independent labels like these that don't sue people for downloading their music?
The current copyright law, as it is being used and abused by the RIAA, is potentially hostile to me. Therefore I currently require that content distributors explicitly grant me reasonable rights, such as archival copies, media shifting, time shifting, etc. Independent labels may not currently be suing people for doing those things, and maybe I could win on those points in court (I believe they are covered by fair use), but the fact is I can't take the risk.
I can't afford a lawsuit, I can't afford to settle, I don't believe the courts would necessarily make what I believe is the right decision, and I don't trust that what the indie label says today will still be their position tomorrow (unless they put it in writing).
So - no raw copyright works for me, thanks. Get one of those labels to switch entirely to some form of CC license, or write a new one that is less than a thousand words and not written in bullshit lawyerese, and maybe I'd consider buying from them. Come to think of it, though, I'm so disgusted with the music industry that I'm probably going to want more to even consider coming back; collaborative filtering for content recommendations that actually works for people who like music other than Britney Spears, maybe a couple decent metal bands that don't turn into sissies on the second album to increase sales, OGG Vorbis ferfucksake (and an iPod that supports it natively). Frankly, I'm probably a lost cause.
Again - not your fault, it's the RIAA's fault. But they have almost completely destroyed raw copyright consumption for me. Their actions, and the broken legal system they abuse, make it perfectly clear that I cannot afford to trust anyone who uses raw copyright. Their reprehensible behavior has made me not interested in trying to meet anyone halfway.
RIAA's idiotic tactics are going to make people want to stop supporting musicians entirely.
I hate to say it, my friend, but you are right, and a little late. I, for one, have stopped purchasing music (and long ago deleted all my infringing copies). I have about a thousand CDs, all purchased before the Metallica / Napster debacle. I have bought half a dozen since, and downloaded a couple albums. From $10k per decade to something like $200 per decade. Entirely because I cannot stand the association which claims to support you and other artists in your fine work.
Now I'm focusing on UGC (user generated content) posted under liberal licenses. There's a lot of good stuff out there. All-in-all, I haven't lost much. But boy have you artists (and the labels) lost a pile on me.
I'm sorry for the extent to which it has impacted you -- I love music, and would like to be a consumer again.
Wikileaks is a good place to start. Another impressive project is GNUNet. The folks working on it have really thought through the technical requirements for robust support of free speech. It is a thing of beauty.
I see this as a brilliant example why the internet must remain a horrible offensive waste of time instead of a government regulated squeaky clean educatin' machine.... It just saved Guatemala from being led by a murderer. Think about that.
Correction -.006% of the population. I'm going to help my brother and some of my less tech-savvy friends get hooked up.
I'm also thinking to do some documentation on what it takes to get them up to speed, so maybe.017% of the population. Maybe a YouTube video if it goes well, so perhaps.028%.
For urban dwellers, we can also set up city-wide off-internet wireless mesh networks (for example). Fuck the ISPs, if projects like this achieve critical mass, we'll have our own local networks with thousands of anonymous peers.
Excellent point. I often forget to mention mesh as the other leg of going dark. Going dark is only half the answer if they decide to kill encrypted comm between two non-corporate / unlicensed / unauthorized / free accounts.
I am not a supporter of copyright infringement. I am, however, a passionate supporter of due process. If they will not abide by due process, disappear.
Don't use it for copyright infringement, that would be illegal. But use it to make everything you do on the Internet much harder to detect. If they are going to use our openness against us, we must stop being open.
It's a little hard to set up a darknet right now, but it will get better if we all work together. Now go forth and start the hard work of remaining free.
Nobles, Romans, Geeks, lend me your ears. This is not going away. They will not stop, no matter how many times they are proven wrong. No matter how many times they are slapped down by the courts. They will keep coming at us, and they will never stop. They have a lot of money, and they think they have it all to lose. The only solution is to disappear.
Start working on your darknet, today. The only way out is to become invisible.
I am not advocating copyright infringement. I don't think you should use a darknet to break the law. But you absolutely should do what you can to make your Internet behavior inscrutable. It is none of their business, but they will keep monitoring you, and finding new things you are doing to outlaw, until they own you, or you disappear.
This, copyright infringement, is only one tiny piece. It is not the only field in which you are being watched, and it is far from the most dangerous one. The only way to protect free speech and free association is to make your speech and association impossible to observe.
Now go, and actively engage in the hard work of being free.
This option already exists. For the websites, the answer is "always on". We can safely assume that every site wants us all to turn off AdBlock, so the pop-up box does not add any information. For the users, it's the "whitelist" feature in AdBlock. I can turn on ads for any site I want to whitelist. My browser, my choice. That's the way the Internet works. Don't like it? Stop putting stuff on the Internet. If AdBlock won't do it, I'll code it myself or put entries in my hosts file. AdBlock is just easier.
The reason I have ads turned off is because some of them interrupt my browsing experience -- with sound, or popups, or other annoyances. Interstitials I have no problem with, but don't pop a big turd in the middle of what I'm reading, while I'm reading, or have some noise rattle my speakers. You be rude, I turn you off. Start being nice, I'll turn you back on. And Flash? Flash is never getting turned back on by default in any browser I use. Permanent ban for egregious bad behavior. But I digress.
The interrupt is the problem. "Fixing" AdBlock by making AdBlock engage in the same bad behavior I choose to avoid is not a workable solution. I would just switch to or code an alternative.
Thanks for the interesting question. Hope this helps.
The money is fair enough, and the employment conditions would seem excellent, since they would enable us to manage good-sized motivated teams, but we are very emotionally attached to our development and we place great importance to being independent. We founded our company because we didn't want to follow rules. We wanted to be the ones who make the rules instead. Money really doesn't mean much to us as long as we can do whatever we want while excelling at our passions.
I feel you, my friend. I have not been exactly there, but have been in very similar situations. While I don't know your exact situation, I can tell you how I would think about it. What follows is stream-of-consciousness, late on a Friday evening - take it for what it's worth.:)
If my main goal is to do independent development, I would look for paths that get me to that goal while satisfying my other important needs.
Supposing I were a young hot-shot with a belly full of fire, I would feel confident that I could succeed running my own company, working as a unit of a larger company, or trying something else. That last bit is important -- technology, and technology skills, are highly fluid. If you got to where you are, you can probably get there again, given the opportunity.
Mixing those two ideas together, I would start thinking about how to structure the deal with the big company. What would I want to get out of it? Well, if I want to be independent again, preferably while I still have a belly full of fire, I'd want to think about my exit strategy from the parent company. Do they want me to commit to them for some period of time? Are there golden handcuffs that are going to tempt me to stay after I'm ready to leave? A golden parachute if they take the technology and cut me out?
That would lead me to think about how the payout is structured. There will probably be some mix of cash, immediately vesting stock, and stock that vests over time. Suppose you want to leave in one year -- how much of the total payout would you have to sacrifice? Is the parent company willing to shift to more front-loading? How much back end do you have to give up to get more now?
But why go through all that thinking if your intent were to stay with the parent company and see the product through to maturity? It is entirely reasonable to want to see your product grow, and to guide its development. That is a very healthy way to view system engineering.
The reason to think that way anyway is this: If you can work out an exit strategy that you and your friends can agree on, you don't have to worry as much about whether the relationship with the parent company will remain healthy. That future is an unknown, and there are many examples of your sort of situation going well, and just as many of them going poorly. If it works out, that's great! If not, you and your friends can head off on a new adventure together. As long as you have some front-loading and/or short horizon payout, you have a safe way out. That safe path in case things go awry can give you the confidence to join the company.
Also consider it from the big company's perspective: If they are confident that they will be a healthy environment for you and your friends, they should not be too afraid of giving you some front loading to guarantee that you will come out reasonably whole.
At the same time, don't be rude. You don't have to tell them that you're looking for a reasonable exit strategy -- they will understand that. Just discuss the options of front versus back loading, and then talk with your friends in private to discuss whether the range of options includes something you are comfortable with.
And, honestly, I'd lean toward doing the knowledge transfer to the new company and moving on as soon as it was working for them. Make sure you have the right to work together on non-competing projects in the future. Make sure you have the right to develop independent ideas with
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a newspaper company... There is no money in journalism... What other ideas are out there to keep news journalism profitable?
I'm curious - one of the things I have heard said about newspapers is that they gave up journalism in the 80's when they started ripping each other's content and getting their feeds from AP, cutting their stable of beat journalists.
Do you see that as a valid criticism, or does your newspaper still invest the same amount of resources in critical, objective, investigative journalism as it used to?
The process of R2-45 specifically pertains to shooting the target with a Colt .45 pistol, causing the victim's "thetan" to leave the body (exteriorization)
Will that work with my Kimber 1911 or do I have to find an original Colt Government Model to destroy my thetan with? ;)
Knowing Scientology, you need a very particular custom Kimber that can only be purchased from the CoS for a cost about five times that of the fanciest race gun you've ever seen.
Nah - they wouldn't use Kimbers - that would show on the bottom line. I'm thinking Hi-Point.
That's also the predominate difference between Scientology and real religions - Scientology is better with the financial side of the operation. :)
You can have my online freedom when you pry it from my cold, dead, CPU.
Number 1: You cannot stop me from using encryption without denying me access to microchips. I'll run it on Atmel AVR chips if I have to.
Number 2: You cannot stop me from sending encrypted data, unless you stop me from sending data. I can hide it in DNS queries if I have to.
Number 3: I'm a real nice guy, I don't want to fight this fight, and I pay for my copyrighted materials.
Number 4: Don't fuck with me. I fuck back.
I understand that the entertainment industry is going through some challenges right now, and that there will be winners and losers, and that Sony will probably fall on the loser side. But you cannot take my freedom (read: it is not possible). The harder you try, the worse it will get for everyone.
Marketing Guy: So, there are artificial flavors made from coca?
Food Chemistry Guy: Yeah, wild, eh?
Marketing Guy: Can you just fill the can with artificial flavoring?
Food Chemistry Guy: No, it would kill our customers, and it would be illegal. The allowable level is much lower than 100%.
Marketing Guy: How much lower?
Food Chemistry Guy: 120 PPM. [note: totally made up]
Marketing Guy: What's a PPM?
Food Chemistry Guy: Parts per million, it is a more precise measure of...
Marketing Guy: [interrupting] Forget I asked -- just put in as much as you can.
Food Chemistry Guy: But, it'll taste terrible.
Marketing Guy: [blinks] ... Ummm, have you tasted regular Red Bull?
Oh, hey, and here's the whole UAV category:
http://www.rcgroups.com/uav-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-238/ :)
Here's a thread on someone else's experience seeking the same objective:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1054800&highlight=uav
Not sure if you already have radio-controlled airplane experience. If you do not, I have a very solid recommendation for you:
A world-class starter platform for both learning to fly and lifting is the Slow Stick. It is one of the most popular planes with RC hackers, is cheap as dirt, has solid lifting potential (and upgrades can make it a real monster), and has lots of commercially available upgrade parts.
I'd go with a slow stick glider, and add a cheap brushless motor for starters (in fact, that's precisely what I have about six feet behind me for my first aerial photography platform). That will give you a good mix of cheap and solid lifting potential.
As for the forum, Slashdot is a good place to start for all things geeky, but the specialist forums you're looking for are at RCGroups:
http://www.rcgroups.com/
Here's the main starter thread for Slow Sticks:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122951
Admit your noob-ness, ask for advice, be respectful, weather the occasional ornery response with good humor, and you can learn everything you want to know at RC Groups.
How many cats lead blind people?
I dunno, but the entire software industry is filled with blind people herding cats. :)
As an example, Grimes assumes an eight-character password, with complexity enabled, a 94-symbol character set, and 90 days between password changes. Such a policy, typical for many organizations, would require attackers to make only 65 guesses per minute to break -- not at all hard to accomplish, Grimes writes.
90 * 24 * 60 * 65 = 8,424,000
8 ^ 8 = 16,777,216
So if you used an 8 character set, 8 characters wide, you'd get broken by Roger's attack. And you'd be an idiot.
Dictionary attacks? Ask yourself this: What other attack vectors do you open up by using this fame-monger's advice on how to mitigate dictionary attacks? Does Roger address that concern? Might that be because he doesn't know what he's talking about, and is more concerned with getting column inches and his face on your computer screen than he is with security?
Just a thought.
As always, I love you dearly with all my heart and remember to tell drinkyurine that I miss him. Please accept my apologies for such a bad summary and don't let this obstruct our friendship which is sometimes as delicate as a flower covered in dew on a crisp summer morn.
HAHAHAHAHAH -- brilliant!
1. Probably the largest developer base short of Javascript.
2. Unemployment is through the roof.
3. Corporations looking for ways to cut costs.
4. Open Source hackers continue their enjoyment of food and shelter.
5. Oracle got Sun for pennies.
If this was your idea, Mr. Ellison, take another sailboat out of petty cash. You've earned it.
A judge used the term "metadata" correctly. That is a good technical concept to grasp. We geeks and our friends like NYCL (who may also be a geek - not trying to exclude) have been bandying it about for years, but to 99% of the population it is a pretty foreign term.
Each example like this implies that the judicial is growing more familiar with technical concepts. That makes me happy. :)
For most people on slashdot, the RIAA is just a justification to make themselves feel better about downloading instead of buying.
Oh - and on that. My first reaction was, "fuck'em, those people are assholes."
But, then, copyright is supposed to be a bargain struck between the public which grants a fiat monopoly and the individual who benefits from it. Copyright was a pretty darned fair balance at one time -- but is it still? If the RIAA and Disney have purchased changes in the law to circumvent the bargain that copyright was meant to be, is there no understanding when the other side retaliates?
I'm not saying where I stand -- as I noted in my post I deleted all my infringing content back in 1999. But I have spent many hours considering the balance of copyright, the endless extensions thereof, and what that implies for the person on the other side of the teeter-totter. And I think everyone has to do that part -- the deep consideration -- if they want to hold a well-reasoned opinion on the matter.
Which leads me back to thinking those people are assholes -- because I figure most of them haven't really gone through the deep consideration part.
But then, the effectiveness of tit-for-tat in game theory isn't just theory. It's what any organic system will naturally evolve. Thinking the gov't, courts, RIAA, and Orrin Hatch can stop it is to ignore the seismic power of organic systems. Which is why I don't worry about it too much. They'll all get ground to dust eventually, on this matter. It's only a question of how many innocents like you get caught in the crossfire while they attempt to defend their hopeless position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
Why buy no CDs at all, instead of buying from independent labels like these that don't sue people for downloading their music?
The current copyright law, as it is being used and abused by the RIAA, is potentially hostile to me. Therefore I currently require that content distributors explicitly grant me reasonable rights, such as archival copies, media shifting, time shifting, etc. Independent labels may not currently be suing people for doing those things, and maybe I could win on those points in court (I believe they are covered by fair use), but the fact is I can't take the risk.
I can't afford a lawsuit, I can't afford to settle, I don't believe the courts would necessarily make what I believe is the right decision, and I don't trust that what the indie label says today will still be their position tomorrow (unless they put it in writing).
So - no raw copyright works for me, thanks. Get one of those labels to switch entirely to some form of CC license, or write a new one that is less than a thousand words and not written in bullshit lawyerese, and maybe I'd consider buying from them. Come to think of it, though, I'm so disgusted with the music industry that I'm probably going to want more to even consider coming back; collaborative filtering for content recommendations that actually works for people who like music other than Britney Spears, maybe a couple decent metal bands that don't turn into sissies on the second album to increase sales, OGG Vorbis ferfucksake (and an iPod that supports it natively). Frankly, I'm probably a lost cause.
Again - not your fault, it's the RIAA's fault. But they have almost completely destroyed raw copyright consumption for me. Their actions, and the broken legal system they abuse, make it perfectly clear that I cannot afford to trust anyone who uses raw copyright. Their reprehensible behavior has made me not interested in trying to meet anyone halfway.
RIAA's idiotic tactics are going to make people want to stop supporting musicians entirely.
I hate to say it, my friend, but you are right, and a little late. I, for one, have stopped purchasing music (and long ago deleted all my infringing copies). I have about a thousand CDs, all purchased before the Metallica / Napster debacle. I have bought half a dozen since, and downloaded a couple albums. From $10k per decade to something like $200 per decade. Entirely because I cannot stand the association which claims to support you and other artists in your fine work.
Now I'm focusing on UGC (user generated content) posted under liberal licenses. There's a lot of good stuff out there. All-in-all, I haven't lost much. But boy have you artists (and the labels) lost a pile on me.
I'm sorry for the extent to which it has impacted you -- I love music, and would like to be a consumer again.
Wikileaks is a good place to start. Another impressive project is GNUNet. The folks working on it have really thought through the technical requirements for robust support of free speech. It is a thing of beauty.
http://gnunet.org/
http://gnunet.org/faq.php3?xlang=English
I see this as a brilliant example why the internet must remain a horrible offensive waste of time instead of a government regulated squeaky clean educatin' machine. ... It just saved Guatemala from being led by a murderer. Think about that.
Well said.
After thinking about that, install this:
http://gnunet.org/
http://gnunet.org/faq.php3?xlang=English
Ok, that takes care of .001% of the population.
Correction - .006% of the population. I'm going to help my brother and some of my less tech-savvy friends get hooked up.
I'm also thinking to do some documentation on what it takes to get them up to speed, so maybe .017% of the population. Maybe a YouTube video if it goes well, so perhaps .028%.
Will you help? That might get us to .043%. :)
For urban dwellers, we can also set up city-wide off-internet wireless mesh networks (for example). Fuck the ISPs, if projects like this achieve critical mass, we'll have our own local networks with thousands of anonymous peers.
Excellent point. I often forget to mention mesh as the other leg of going dark. Going dark is only half the answer if they decide to kill encrypted comm between two non-corporate / unlicensed / unauthorized / free accounts.
I am not a supporter of copyright infringement. I am, however, a passionate supporter of due process. If they will not abide by due process, disappear.
Start building your darknet, today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_(file_sharing)
Don't use it for copyright infringement, that would be illegal. But use it to make everything you do on the Internet much harder to detect. If they are going to use our openness against us, we must stop being open.
It's a little hard to set up a darknet right now, but it will get better if we all work together. Now go forth and start the hard work of remaining free.
Nobles, Romans, Geeks, lend me your ears. This is not going away. They will not stop, no matter how many times they are proven wrong. No matter how many times they are slapped down by the courts. They will keep coming at us, and they will never stop. They have a lot of money, and they think they have it all to lose. The only solution is to disappear.
Start working on your darknet, today. The only way out is to become invisible.
There are others, and I think this one shows promise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P
I am not advocating copyright infringement. I don't think you should use a darknet to break the law. But you absolutely should do what you can to make your Internet behavior inscrutable. It is none of their business, but they will keep monitoring you, and finding new things you are doing to outlaw, until they own you, or you disappear.
This, copyright infringement, is only one tiny piece. It is not the only field in which you are being watched, and it is far from the most dangerous one. The only way to protect free speech and free association is to make your speech and association impossible to observe.
Now go, and actively engage in the hard work of being free.
This option already exists. For the websites, the answer is "always on". We can safely assume that every site wants us all to turn off AdBlock, so the pop-up box does not add any information. For the users, it's the "whitelist" feature in AdBlock. I can turn on ads for any site I want to whitelist. My browser, my choice. That's the way the Internet works. Don't like it? Stop putting stuff on the Internet. If AdBlock won't do it, I'll code it myself or put entries in my hosts file. AdBlock is just easier.
The reason I have ads turned off is because some of them interrupt my browsing experience -- with sound, or popups, or other annoyances. Interstitials I have no problem with, but don't pop a big turd in the middle of what I'm reading, while I'm reading, or have some noise rattle my speakers. You be rude, I turn you off. Start being nice, I'll turn you back on. And Flash? Flash is never getting turned back on by default in any browser I use. Permanent ban for egregious bad behavior. But I digress.
The interrupt is the problem. "Fixing" AdBlock by making AdBlock engage in the same bad behavior I choose to avoid is not a workable solution. I would just switch to or code an alternative.
Hi,
Thanks for the interesting question. Hope this helps.
The money is fair enough, and the employment conditions would seem excellent, since they would enable us to manage good-sized motivated teams, but we are very emotionally attached to our development and we place great importance to being independent. We founded our company because we didn't want to follow rules. We wanted to be the ones who make the rules instead. Money really doesn't mean much to us as long as we can do whatever we want while excelling at our passions.
I feel you, my friend. I have not been exactly there, but have been in very similar situations. While I don't know your exact situation, I can tell you how I would think about it. What follows is stream-of-consciousness, late on a Friday evening - take it for what it's worth. :)
If my main goal is to do independent development, I would look for paths that get me to that goal while satisfying my other important needs.
Supposing I were a young hot-shot with a belly full of fire, I would feel confident that I could succeed running my own company, working as a unit of a larger company, or trying something else. That last bit is important -- technology, and technology skills, are highly fluid. If you got to where you are, you can probably get there again, given the opportunity.
Mixing those two ideas together, I would start thinking about how to structure the deal with the big company. What would I want to get out of it? Well, if I want to be independent again, preferably while I still have a belly full of fire, I'd want to think about my exit strategy from the parent company. Do they want me to commit to them for some period of time? Are there golden handcuffs that are going to tempt me to stay after I'm ready to leave? A golden parachute if they take the technology and cut me out?
That would lead me to think about how the payout is structured. There will probably be some mix of cash, immediately vesting stock, and stock that vests over time. Suppose you want to leave in one year -- how much of the total payout would you have to sacrifice? Is the parent company willing to shift to more front-loading? How much back end do you have to give up to get more now?
But why go through all that thinking if your intent were to stay with the parent company and see the product through to maturity? It is entirely reasonable to want to see your product grow, and to guide its development. That is a very healthy way to view system engineering.
The reason to think that way anyway is this: If you can work out an exit strategy that you and your friends can agree on, you don't have to worry as much about whether the relationship with the parent company will remain healthy. That future is an unknown, and there are many examples of your sort of situation going well, and just as many of them going poorly. If it works out, that's great! If not, you and your friends can head off on a new adventure together. As long as you have some front-loading and/or short horizon payout, you have a safe way out. That safe path in case things go awry can give you the confidence to join the company.
Also consider it from the big company's perspective: If they are confident that they will be a healthy environment for you and your friends, they should not be too afraid of giving you some front loading to guarantee that you will come out reasonably whole.
At the same time, don't be rude. You don't have to tell them that you're looking for a reasonable exit strategy -- they will understand that. Just discuss the options of front versus back loading, and then talk with your friends in private to discuss whether the range of options includes something you are comfortable with.
And, honestly, I'd lean toward doing the knowledge transfer to the new company and moving on as soon as it was working for them. Make sure you have the right to work together on non-competing projects in the future. Make sure you have the right to develop independent ideas with
I believe the late 20th / early 21st century poet, philosopher, and artist, Randall Munroe, said it best: "You're doing it wrong!"
http://xkcd.com/463/
I have wolf spiders > 10 cm running around and often through my home.
Giant Wolf-Eating Spiders, More Than Twice The Size of Bird-Eating Spiders, Invade Area Resident's Home! :)