I alwyas find it "interesting" when people credit Apple for inventing stuff.
Excuse me, but I think I was pretty clear that there were others available before Apple. That was the whole point of my comment - how they affected an existing market.
There were only a handful of portable players on the market when the first iPod came out in 2001, and they were not that cheap. The featuritis and commodification of the non-apple market, which drove prices down to $12, happened afterwards.
The same thing is happening to smart phones, and we can expect it too with the iPad. From Apples perspective, whatever grows the market is all good for them as long as they own the most profitable segment.
It is funny how people take extreme examples to make a point of justification, like the 95 years old[...]
I was trying to pick a single, real example that illustrated as many pain points as possible. Obviously there are far more people who might only have 1 or 2 of those issues. They'll still want one - though perhaps not as badly.
I have a 95 yr old neighbor who uses an old Windows machine and AOL dialup. He's still able to do the things he has always done with it, but he wants a faster connection and a newer computer but doesn't want to have to learn a new OS. Neither cable nor DSL is available, and he doesn't have line of sight to be able to use directional microwave technology which is what some people use around here.
However, the iPad is SO easy to use there's really nothing to learn. I have shown him how to use my iPhone to take pictures, browse pictures and read the news, and it's just so intuitive and easy.
And he DOES have 3g coverage. So he can get one device with no cables or router that does everything he needs and is easy to learn.
I think Slashdotters are for the most part woefully ignorant of how the rest of humanity actually uses computers, and would do well to understand these types of use cases. They will sell millions.
Does your app use a database for something back-endy, like, for example, MythTV does for its settings and lists of channels and TV programs? Well, either forget it, or be prepared to put your users through hell as they have to ensure that the entirely separate DBMS is installed and that usernames and passwords are set up for your application's use.
sqlite is underrated and would be ideal for many such applications.
Dude you are really fixated on this question. Do you actually think that people get to entertain such figures when starting a business? Facebook is a one-in-million success, and the big rewards come long after the risks are taken and the hard work is done. Furthermore, in the case of facebook the founders still haven't actually collected those billions - maybe if they have an IPO it'll happen.
Just for shits I will try to answer your question. But I can not ignore the point that the big reward is only a chance, and then only if one works very very hard. here goes
If you paid me $1M/yr, I would show up for work and do whatever you reasonably asked of me until I had a nice house that was paid off and enough to retire. This might take 3 yrs at which point I'd lose interest unless you were willing to pay me a lot more. Or if I didn't totally hate working for you (entrepreneurs hate working for anyone) I might stick around.
But if my own business paid me next to nothing, but with a very good chance at earning $2B+ in the future, I would work my fucking balls off day and night. And the poorer I were, the harder I would work as long as that carrot was out there. In terms of specific personal actions I might sacrifice my physical health (seeing the doctor when I should), sanity (getting enough sleep), eating properly, personal relations (dating), social life (going out drinking), appearance (eg taking time to buy fashionable clothes and dress properly), whatever it takes. It's a totally different ballgame than going to work and getting paid well every dayy.
I should point out though that such wild capital appreciation is not the only reason people go into business for themselves. Many people just don't want to have a boss, would like to fit their job around a certain lifestyle, etc. That doesn't entail these sorts of sacrifices. Bottom line is not everyone has the same values as you - don't think it's so ridiculous that what's just not worth it to you might be motivating to someone else.
Yes, I omitted the word "in" between "million" and "two". Therefore, I am wrong. The strength of your argument being overwhelming, I am forced to concede.
I might have guessed that, or I might have guessed "for", which would have made only slightly less sense.
If you have a point, why don't you come out and state it instead of asking me to answer an implausible question?
Your rhetorical question is drivel. It doesn't even parse in English, let alone relate to any plausible scenario I can imagine an entrepreneur encountering:
To simplify the scenario, let's pretend instead that you receive a lump-sum payment of $2 billion or $1 million two years. What specific actions would take for the former that you would not take for the latter?
Why don't you put down your drink for a minute and see if you can muster a moment of clarity. If you can express yourself a little better then I might continue this conversation. Otherwise, good night.
You're not the brightest crayon in the box are you? Nobody knows who the winners will be until years down the road. There are no billions of dollars in play on day one.
Let me ask the question a different way then: which particular tasks related to founding a company would you personally perform in exchange for $2 billion, but not in exchange for $1 million? Would you work longer hours? Talk to your family less?
Would I prefer $1M now vs $2B later? Are you seriously that obtuse, or have I been trolled?
Do you have any notion of what the "tasks related to founding a company" even are? Just some legal paperwork, I suppose?
Are you seriously arguing that unless the first derivative of one's salary is positive, there's no incentive to work?
No, I did not say that one's salary needs to be monotonically increasing. That is not the point at all. And did you really have to turn this into a calculus problem?
To state it differently, many entrepreneurs are willing to work temporarily for little or even nothing, and to make great sacrifices such as giving up health benefits, vacations, and normal family/social life... things most 9-5 workers would never consider. Being someone's bitch for $1M/yr (or to be pedantic let's say $1M/yr + 5%/yr^2) may sound like a splendid deal to you but there are others who would work much harder for sweat equity in their own venture.
These people exist even if you can't fathom it. I'm one of them.
I doubt Zuckerberg would have worked any less hard (or hacked any fewer email accounts) if he had been paid the mere subsidence wage of $1 million per year.
Entrepreneurs are a funny breed. It's the extreme risk and reward - the prospect of riches just around the corner that drives them, not the daily feed bag (which keeps corporate drones climbing the ladder). Or course $1M/year is a lot of dough but it doesn't matter what the number is, once it's rolling in steady the motivation is gone. In other words, I disagree.
Aside from being in the same room, these programmers were barely working together. This was NOT an attempt to accelerate a single, large, overdue project (the Mythical Man Month problem) - and they explicitly say so! I wonder if the submitter even read the book, or just heard the title somewhere and thought it was a catchy buzz phrase.
Give interns loosely-coupled projects. Our internship program would never have worked if we had assigned a dozen new people to hack on our kernel code--the training time and communication costs that drive Brooks' Law would have swallowed their efforts whole. Fortunately, like any growing business, we had a constellation of projects that lie around the edges of our core technology: infrastructure upgrades, additional layers of QA, business analytics, and new features in the management side of our product. Few of these had elaborate technical interfaces with any of our existing software, so our interns were able to become productive with minimal ramp-up and rely on relatively little communication to get their projects done.
In other words: they had an "embarrassingly parallel" problem and did the obviously right thing.
The only responsibility Google has is to make a profit. That's what "corporation" means.
Actually, no. The word literally means "embodiment", which is the essence of its legal definition. A corporation could exist for the explicit purpose of losing money, giving it to charity, spreading the gospel, etc. Whatever the shareholders prescribe.
Example of a recent actual purchase: Food Rules. $5 paper, $5 kindle.
I'd consider that a particularly good example of getting far less value in the kindle version, because that is exactly the kind of book that I would want to give to a friend when I'm done with it.
I would like to remind you that the Kindle has a e-ink screen is much easier on the eyes than an LCD is.
Saying it doesn't make it true, but thank you for "reminding" me of the points I already specifically addressed. Have you actually used a Kindle in typical indoor lighting conditions for any length of time?
The development of new kinds of e-ink tech (both color and faster refreshing) also gives Amazon a road-map for future screen improvements.
Agreed, I like what ePaper manufacturers are promising for the future. But I would like a usable eBook reader today.
So you think the titles are too expensive, then you lambast Amazon for dropping a publisher which tried to hike their prices by 50%?
Exactly. eBooks are _already_ overpriced. Not available AND overpriced is even worse. I couldn't care less for them and I'm not even saying Amazon is entirely to blame. It seems the publishers have the upper hand, now that they can play them against Apple. waaah.
Amazon knows they're going to have to be way cheaper in order to sell any more Kindles. The problem with the Kindle is, well, it kind of sucks. I am a regular Amazon customer and have been using one since the second version came out, but there are some major problems wth it.
Screen contrast. The Kindle's contrast ratio is worse than newspaper printing or the cheapest paperback. You can read it in direct sunlight, sure, but can you read it indoors without a 200W light bulb directly behind you? I get eyestrain with it after just 15 minutes, but I can read a good LCD for hours.
Bad for illustrations. More than half the books I read are technical in nature and have diagrams and equations that require zooming to read. The problem is zooming is incredibly slow and laborious on the Kindle, and in most cases the bitmap image quality is not sufficient to read anyway.
Freagin slow. Right, it doesn't matter when you're just paging through a novel, but this makes it useless for shopping for books, web browsing, or quickly finding something in a reference book.
Titles are too expensive. Many paperbacks are SAME price delivered 2nd-day UPS to my doorstep (with Prime free shipping). What the fuck? And then more expensive titles are only a few dollars cheaper for the Kindle edition but of vastly poorer quality and without the ownership and durability advantages of a dead tree.
Apple is going to absolutely slaughter them on 1 through 3, maybe not 4. I'm looking forward to having another eBook reader to choose from.
Amazon dropping publishers is just an offense to me as their customer. I have no sympathy for them here. Maybe some day ePaper will deliver on its promise but for now I've given up.
Even if we were to assume that these "electromagnetic allergies" did exist, no one is forcing that man to live there. As an example, I'm allergic to dogs, but I'm not suing my neighbor for owning one. It's my choice to live where I do and it's not my prerogative to tell him that he can't own a dog.
That's not how it works - homeowners legally entitled to some degree of peace and quiet. There are local ordinances for that sort of thing, as dogs are a potential disturbance. Your neighbor probably can't legally keep six dogs in a suburb backyard, for example, although a reasonable neighbor wouldn't complain unless they were barking all night or something. The point is, it's not the free-for-all you're imagining.
In this case the emissions are regulated by the FCC and if the guy's router is operating within the limits for the unlicensed band then there is simply no actionable offense.
Why on earth do these things appear to have screensavers?
Kindle does not have an animated screensaver, it just displays some static artwork such as a photograph of a famous author. It's only one refresh when it goes to sleep and one more when you wake it up.
Give me a shell on a unix machine somewhere with a compiler, and I can guarantee almost nothing I do will compromise the integrity of said machine... up until I run sudo somethingorother
That's great, but how are you going to use your unix shell account to develop WINDOWS SOFTWARE?... that was the whole point of the original question.
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. -- Mein Kampf
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, but I think I was pretty clear that there were others available before Apple. That was the whole point of my comment - how they affected an existing market.
The same thing is happening to smart phones, and we can expect it too with the iPad. From Apples perspective, whatever grows the market is all good for them as long as they own the most profitable segment.
I was trying to pick a single, real example that illustrated as many pain points as possible. Obviously there are far more people who might only have 1 or 2 of those issues. They'll still want one - though perhaps not as badly.
However, the iPad is SO easy to use there's really nothing to learn. I have shown him how to use my iPhone to take pictures, browse pictures and read the news, and it's just so intuitive and easy.
And he DOES have 3g coverage. So he can get one device with no cables or router that does everything he needs and is easy to learn.
I think Slashdotters are for the most part woefully ignorant of how the rest of humanity actually uses computers, and would do well to understand these types of use cases. They will sell millions.
sqlite is underrated and would be ideal for many such applications.
Just for shits I will try to answer your question. But I can not ignore the point that the big reward is only a chance, and then only if one works very very hard. here goes
If you paid me $1M/yr, I would show up for work and do whatever you reasonably asked of me until I had a nice house that was paid off and enough to retire. This might take 3 yrs at which point I'd lose interest unless you were willing to pay me a lot more. Or if I didn't totally hate working for you (entrepreneurs hate working for anyone) I might stick around.
But if my own business paid me next to nothing, but with a very good chance at earning $2B+ in the future, I would work my fucking balls off day and night. And the poorer I were, the harder I would work as long as that carrot was out there. In terms of specific personal actions I might sacrifice my physical health (seeing the doctor when I should), sanity (getting enough sleep), eating properly, personal relations (dating), social life (going out drinking), appearance (eg taking time to buy fashionable clothes and dress properly), whatever it takes. It's a totally different ballgame than going to work and getting paid well every dayy.
I should point out though that such wild capital appreciation is not the only reason people go into business for themselves. Many people just don't want to have a boss, would like to fit their job around a certain lifestyle, etc. That doesn't entail these sorts of sacrifices. Bottom line is not everyone has the same values as you - don't think it's so ridiculous that what's just not worth it to you might be motivating to someone else.
Yes, I omitted the word "in" between "million" and "two". Therefore, I am wrong. The strength of your argument being overwhelming, I am forced to concede.
I might have guessed that, or I might have guessed "for", which would have made only slightly less sense.
If you have a point, why don't you come out and state it instead of asking me to answer an implausible question?
Your rhetorical question is drivel. It doesn't even parse in English, let alone relate to any plausible scenario I can imagine an entrepreneur encountering:
Why don't you put down your drink for a minute and see if you can muster a moment of clarity. If you can express yourself a little better then I might continue this conversation. Otherwise, good night.
You're not the brightest crayon in the box are you? Nobody knows who the winners will be until years down the road. There are no billions of dollars in play on day one.
Let me ask the question a different way then: which particular tasks related to founding a company would you personally perform in exchange for $2 billion, but not in exchange for $1 million? Would you work longer hours? Talk to your family less?
Would I prefer $1M now vs $2B later? Are you seriously that obtuse, or have I been trolled?
Do you have any notion of what the "tasks related to founding a company" even are? Just some legal paperwork, I suppose?
Are you seriously arguing that unless the first derivative of one's salary is positive, there's no incentive to work?
No, I did not say that one's salary needs to be monotonically increasing. That is not the point at all. And did you really have to turn this into a calculus problem?
To state it differently, many entrepreneurs are willing to work temporarily for little or even nothing, and to make great sacrifices such as giving up health benefits, vacations, and normal family/social life... things most 9-5 workers would never consider. Being someone's bitch for $1M/yr (or to be pedantic let's say $1M/yr + 5%/yr^2) may sound like a splendid deal to you but there are others who would work much harder for sweat equity in their own venture.
These people exist even if you can't fathom it. I'm one of them.
I doubt Zuckerberg would have worked any less hard (or hacked any fewer email accounts) if he had been paid the mere subsidence wage of $1 million per year.
Entrepreneurs are a funny breed. It's the extreme risk and reward - the prospect of riches just around the corner that drives them, not the daily feed bag (which keeps corporate drones climbing the ladder). Or course $1M/year is a lot of dough but it doesn't matter what the number is, once it's rolling in steady the motivation is gone. In other words, I disagree.
In other words: they had an "embarrassingly parallel" problem and did the obviously right thing.
That is still slower, not to mention far less efficient for both parties, than event-driven updates.
The only responsibility Google has is to make a profit. That's what "corporation" means.
Actually, no. The word literally means "embodiment", which is the essence of its legal definition. A corporation could exist for the explicit purpose of losing money, giving it to charity, spreading the gospel, etc. Whatever the shareholders prescribe.
Example of a recent actual purchase: Food Rules. $5 paper, $5 kindle.
I'd consider that a particularly good example of getting far less value in the kindle version, because that is exactly the kind of book that I would want to give to a friend when I'm done with it.
I would like to remind you that the Kindle has a e-ink screen is much easier on the eyes than an LCD is.
Saying it doesn't make it true, but thank you for "reminding" me of the points I already specifically addressed. Have you actually used a Kindle in typical indoor lighting conditions for any length of time?
The development of new kinds of e-ink tech (both color and faster refreshing) also gives Amazon a road-map for future screen improvements.
Agreed, I like what ePaper manufacturers are promising for the future. But I would like a usable eBook reader today.
So you think the titles are too expensive, then you lambast Amazon for dropping a publisher which tried to hike their prices by 50%?
Exactly. eBooks are _already_ overpriced. Not available AND overpriced is even worse. I couldn't care less for them and I'm not even saying Amazon is entirely to blame. It seems the publishers have the upper hand, now that they can play them against Apple. waaah.
Apple is going to absolutely slaughter them on 1 through 3, maybe not 4. I'm looking forward to having another eBook reader to choose from.
Amazon dropping publishers is just an offense to me as their customer. I have no sympathy for them here. Maybe some day ePaper will deliver on its promise but for now I've given up.
Even if we were to assume that these "electromagnetic allergies" did exist, no one is forcing that man to live there. As an example, I'm allergic to dogs, but I'm not suing my neighbor for owning one. It's my choice to live where I do and it's not my prerogative to tell him that he can't own a dog.
That's not how it works - homeowners legally entitled to some degree of peace and quiet. There are local ordinances for that sort of thing, as dogs are a potential disturbance. Your neighbor probably can't legally keep six dogs in a suburb backyard, for example, although a reasonable neighbor wouldn't complain unless they were barking all night or something. The point is, it's not the free-for-all you're imagining.
In this case the emissions are regulated by the FCC and if the guy's router is operating within the limits for the unlicensed band then there is simply no actionable offense.
Why on earth do these things appear to have screensavers?
Kindle does not have an animated screensaver, it just displays some static artwork such as a photograph of a famous author. It's only one refresh when it goes to sleep and one more when you wake it up.
Actually, I do precisely that, and test via VMWare.
Sigh... then they're letting you administer your own windows installation aren't they?
Give me a shell on a unix machine somewhere with a compiler, and I can guarantee almost nothing I do will compromise the integrity of said machine... up until I run sudo somethingorother
That's great, but how are you going to use your unix shell account to develop WINDOWS SOFTWARE? ... that was the whole point of the original question.
... and in exchange, they deserve that we regulate the fuck out of them to just sell us the bits.
Google's search is a free service with multiple competitors and negligible customer lock-in. See the difference?
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. -- Mein Kampf