The U.S. has a significantly higher per capita GDP than the countries you mention. Because of decreasing marginal utility per factor of input, it would be harder for the U.S. to be more productive (as productivity is usually measured as average output per labor input, averaged over all labor, not just the first XX hours).
So really taking vacations just makes people more productive according to the standard theory, in the way that exercising actually makes you more dense.
You can simply look at the economic history of the last thirty years, and compare America to Canada, England, France, and Germany. America now has the highest unemployment
Actually American has the lowest unemployment of the countries you mentioned. See this for example.
That would be true if PyQt was available under any of those licenses. However, Riverbank only offers proprietary and GPL. So since he wants to make a proprietary application, he must use the proprietary version.
If you look at the graphs, they tested both Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.5b99, and 3.5b99 was actually significantly slower for every test (except Javascript, for which they were about the same). Also Chrome 4.0.203.2 seems to be slower and use more memory than Chrome 2.0.
I see how this is inconvenient for you, but you seem to be making this whole thing more confusing than it needs to be. You're shipping a proprietary application. Therefore you can't use GPL code in it, and must rely on proprietary code.
But whenever you use proprietary code, you have to worry about the license, whether the proprietary code is from Riverbank, Nokia, or Qualcomm. If you try to sell your application, your customers will have to worry about your proprietary license too.
Why can't anyone be satisfied with a flat profit of several billion dollars a year every year for 10 years?...
I work in finance and would say the basic reason for this is opportunity cost. Any project like this (even small indie games) have some upfront cost. The people who finance these projects generally aren't philanthropists or fan-boys, they want to make as much money as possible.
Doing a bit better than breaking even won't cut it. Games are risky, and if they just wanted some non-negative profit they could put their money in treasury bills (or better yet, TIPS for inflation-sensitivity). If they are going to run the risk of financing a game, they would want a commensurate return. Investing in a game has to be as profitable (on a risk-adjusted basis) as investing in treasuries, bonds, or stocks. All of these instruments are expected to yield compound returns (i.e. "profit" that goes up and up) so if games don't, no one would invest in them.
About your second example of someone being happy with $900K, I would be very happy with that too. However, if you're talking about an individual (not capital providers), you have to compare their opportunity cost, which is wage earnings (salaries). Wages are also expected to increase at an increasing rate in nominal terms.
So anyway, I agree with your point that it is the absolute return that matters. However, no matter how big that absolute return is on a yearly basis, if it never goes up it means the total value never goes up either. The total value of other financial instruments does go up. So eventually the investment will be unattractive on a relative basis.
Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.
I work in finance, so I've studied a bit about the best capital
structure to use to finance a risky project. For instance, classical
finance was often concerned with a given company's optimum mix of
equity (stocks) and debt (bonds).
In recent decades there have been an explosion of alternative
financing methods proposed, and Gabe's suggestion can be seen in this
context. Here are some basic questions to ask:
Would game sponsorship act more like equity, with unlimited upside?
Or would it behave more like debt, with a fixed upside (e.g. a free game)
Is there a sufficiently liquid market for this? Would there be a secondary market (i.e. could people sell their sponsorships)?
What are the transaction costs? They could be regulatory hurdles, analysis costs, or middlemen (paying lawyers/bankers/accountants).
What kind of ROC/IRR would be demanded for sponsorship? How would this compare to current sources of financing?
What are the tax considerations in various countries?
So, is this a promising investment vehicle? Overall, I think the
current system works well for larger (e.g. $30M) projects. Gamers are
interested in playing games, and don't necessarily have large amounts
of money that they want to risk. It would be inefficient for them to
bear the investment risk.
However, for smaller projects ($200K), the analysis costs in getting a
big player to understand the nature and market of the project could be
prohibitive. Gamers, who already have specific knowledge of the
market, might be able to finance the project efficiently because their
cheaper analysis costs would outweigh their lower risk tolerance and
access to capital.
Slashdot Mirror
The U.S. has a significantly higher per capita GDP than the countries you mention. Because of decreasing marginal utility per factor of input, it would be harder for the U.S. to be more productive (as productivity is usually measured as average output per labor input, averaged over all labor, not just the first XX hours).
So really taking vacations just makes people more productive according to the standard theory, in the way that exercising actually makes you more dense.
You can simply look at the economic history of the last thirty years, and compare America to Canada, England, France, and Germany. America now has the highest unemployment
Actually American has the lowest unemployment of the countries you mentioned. See this for example.
That would be true if PyQt was available under any of those licenses. However, Riverbank only offers proprietary and GPL. So since he wants to make a proprietary application, he must use the proprietary version.
If you look at the graphs, they tested both Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.5b99, and 3.5b99 was actually significantly slower for every test (except Javascript, for which they were about the same). Also Chrome 4.0.203.2 seems to be slower and use more memory than Chrome 2.0.
I see how this is inconvenient for you, but you seem to be making this whole thing more confusing than it needs to be. You're shipping a proprietary application. Therefore you can't use GPL code in it, and must rely on proprietary code. But whenever you use proprietary code, you have to worry about the license, whether the proprietary code is from Riverbank, Nokia, or Qualcomm. If you try to sell your application, your customers will have to worry about your proprietary license too.
TFA never said whether he was barefoot, or if the picture was connected to the glass-walking.
Why can't anyone be satisfied with a flat profit of several billion dollars a year every year for 10 years? ...
I work in finance and would say the basic reason for this is opportunity cost. Any project like this (even small indie games) have some upfront cost. The people who finance these projects generally aren't philanthropists or fan-boys, they want to make as much money as possible.
Doing a bit better than breaking even won't cut it. Games are risky, and if they just wanted some non-negative profit they could put their money in treasury bills (or better yet, TIPS for inflation-sensitivity). If they are going to run the risk of financing a game, they would want a commensurate return. Investing in a game has to be as profitable (on a risk-adjusted basis) as investing in treasuries, bonds, or stocks. All of these instruments are expected to yield compound returns (i.e. "profit" that goes up and up) so if games don't, no one would invest in them.
About your second example of someone being happy with $900K, I would be very happy with that too. However, if you're talking about an individual (not capital providers), you have to compare their opportunity cost, which is wage earnings (salaries). Wages are also expected to increase at an increasing rate in nominal terms.
So anyway, I agree with your point that it is the absolute return that matters. However, no matter how big that absolute return is on a yearly basis, if it never goes up it means the total value never goes up either. The total value of other financial instruments does go up. So eventually the investment will be unattractive on a relative basis.
Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.
I'm not sure about GTK, but Qt provides modules for network connectivity, HTML rendering, XML parsing, and database integration.
So, is this a promising investment vehicle? Overall, I think the current system works well for larger (e.g. $30M) projects. Gamers are interested in playing games, and don't necessarily have large amounts of money that they want to risk. It would be inefficient for them to bear the investment risk. However, for smaller projects ($200K), the analysis costs in getting a big player to understand the nature and market of the project could be prohibitive. Gamers, who already have specific knowledge of the market, might be able to finance the project efficiently because their cheaper analysis costs would outweigh their lower risk tolerance and access to capital.