"Let me posit that HFT has driven a lot of people out of business: the specialists, execution brokers and day-traders who used to collect the large rents built into the system in the days of old. HFT and algo-trading practitioners are rent-seekers too, but their rents are far smaller. And the vast majority of the whining you hear is from exactly the people that HFT has displaced. I have read or heard nothing about how medium-to-long-term investors are being disadvantaged by HFT; to the contrary, their costs have gone down substantially.
As for destabilizing the system, sure, a lot can be done to improve the market structure and micro-structure. But we have just come through one of the most volatile and unstable periods ever; did you really expect this or any market structure to survive through this without showing the occasional crack? And what you got, even then, was the Flash Crash and some instances of erroneous behavior, the most egregious of which was Knight. In the days of specialist-and-broker intermediation, we got Black Monday without any macro stress of remotely comparable scale; we got lots of (human) fat finger errors all the time, too.
So, are you saying that it is morally and socially acceptable for one group of error-prone humans to extract large rents from the system, and it is not morally or socially acceptable for another group of (differently) error-prone humans to extract much smaller rents?"
If you think HFT is bad, then you must think $0.99 individual tracks, MP3 players, and digital distribution are also bad since the RIAA no longer dictates how you buy and what you do with the content. It's really not that much different.
I have a WP7 phone. It works quite well. Could it be improved? Yes. It is surprising that an ex-employee might be critical of his former employer? No. But one thing to note about phones - They are more like jewelry than computing devices for most consumers. As a consumer, I would be content with an iPhone, and Android phone, or a WP7 phone. The critical apps are telephony, search, mapping, and photo/video. All smartphones have this. Facebook, twitter, games, music apps, etc are largely supported on all phones now, too. Apps are becoming less of a discriminator in a purchase decision. Anecdotal evidence shows that now that iPhones and Android phones are ubiquitous, teens are becoming more interested in WP7 phones because fewer people have them. "iPhone? Like that's so yesterday!" If Microsoft and Nokia work on a good advertising campaign, they have a good chance for success, especially since the carriers don't subsidize phone in Europe and China.
I picked a WP7 phone because I can program it using.Net languages, which I use every day. The buying experience was abysmal. The rep wanted to steer me to an iPhone or an Android phone, since he didn't know anything about WP7 phones. If anything, the fact that WP7 sells at all in the face of such resistance from the channel suggests that the WP7 phone is a lot better or is a lot more appealing to the consumer for aesthetic or other reasons than people might think. I have no idea if Nokia will be successful with WP7 or not. But WP7 is a good mobile OS. If not Nokia, another vendor will be successful with it. I am happy with WP7, people I know who have WP7 phones are happy with them, too. iPhone owners like or love their phones. The interesting thing is that Android owners tend to be the least enthusiastic about their phones from what I can tell.
People who even walk in looking for Windows Phones are steered towards Android phones.
I will recount my experience: I wanted to by a WP7 handset during the promotion Microsoft ran last year. I set up an appointment at the store to buy the phone. Get to the store and find out they are out of stock. Store people call around and find one left at a store a few blocks away, so I put that one on hold. Go to the other store to get the phone, and the sales rep suggests I should get an iPhone or Android handset instead.
I tell him I want the WP7 phone because I like the development environment for it. That still isn't good enough, so he asks if I am sure. I then ask him what he knows about WP7. Has he ever used it? No. I ask what he knows about WP7. He said he knew nothing about it, he was just more familiar with iPhone and Android.
After I finally convince the guy that I really did want the WP7 phone I had put on hold at the store, he activates it. Turns out he didn't really activate it, he bricked it. Obviously I should have checked it while in the store, but I never had a problem before. I took the phone to another store the next day to have it reset after spending an hour with customer support to try a manual activation which failed. Clearly the rep had no training for the phone. I have a hard time believing a typical consumer would put up with half of the hassle I did before they would say: "Give me an iPhone, this one doesn't work." It seems to me that Microsoft has totally dropped the ball with the sales force at the carriers. They should not be pushing the phone until the store reps are comfortable with it and show at least a little enthusiasm for the device. Microsoft should spend some of the marketing money flying reps to Hawaii or Vail or Jamaica or wherever sales rep paradise might be.
As for WP7, I do like what Microsoft has done in general. There are still rough edges here and there, but I would guess they will be addressed in future phone releases. The voice translation is amazingly good, and the Bing music recognition feature works really well. Turn by Turn navigation works well, too. I have not had any problems with crashes or the disappearing keyboard. The active tiles are nice, and a lot better than the icon infestation of iOS. I think it is at least equal to iOS and Android in terms of utility. But for me, the big selling point is not the phone, but rather Visual Studio and Expression Blend, which make app development much nicer that the pain of XCode. I haven't done much with Android, but colleagues who are developing for it tell me they would prefer to use Visual Studio, and that the fragmentation of Android really is a problem from a QA perspective.
To be good at any type of knowledge or artisan work, a person has to have some level of personal curiosity or interest in what the job involves. My guess is that most of the people who attend this event are doing because they want/need a job. The kind of person I would be interested in hiring would already be doing some programming in his or her free time. There will be a few people who attend who will discover that programming is something they really enjoy, but that group will be a small minority. OTOH, many others will find they dislike programming and will stay away from it.
Hopefully someone is going to track the results over time. Maybe a few of the attendees with initiative will create a database app to do just that.
There are really two topics of discussion regarding the FTT.
Mitigate presumed negative effects of HFT
Create a new revenue source
If you listen to the interview, Gates appears to be pondering the merit of a FTT in order to increase the amount of revenue available for aid, presumably foreign aid for promotion of health care in poor countries. He says nothing about HFT, and also notes that if the FTT is too high, it could have negative consequences.
In my view, it is an extremely bad idea, especially if cast in terms of the "immorality of HFT", which few if any in politics understand to begin with. How is it that political figures are anointed best qualified to determine how long a person or legal entity owns a stock? If a FTT is matter or "market morality", what are we to make of short selling? How long will it be until someone in politics determines short sellers are Evildoers and should pay more FTT than buyers? Maybe the FTT should be higher for:
because we all know some people think software companies are evil, too.
What happens if someone has a losing stock position? Do they get a refund of the FTT? Should they only get if refund if they were long? People are complaining about HFT because they believe it distorts the markets, yet at the same time want to apply an FTT which can and will be changed to according to political whims. This in order to prevent market distortions? Speaking of markets and tax policies designed to benefit the public,what of the $140 BILLION the taxpayer just put into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two entities that are back for more... The FTT is one of the worst ideas to be floated in response to the financial implosion. Full disclosure - I am an occasional day trader. What am I to make of the person who criticizes me for not holding a stock for a $ARBITRARY_TIME_PERIOD? Am I therefore entitled to criticize someone for upgrading from an iPhone 4 to a 4S? "You should not be allowed to change your phone more than once per year without paying an extra tax. I see you bought new clothes when your old duds were fine. You should pay more tax for that, too! Etc." That would be absurd. If you do or do not want to transact for a legal good or service, that is your choice. I have a hard time thinking of any transaction tax policy that actually accomplished anything good, but I can think of several that had deleterious effects.
I plan to get a WP7 phone when the new handsets are out. They do have a number of nice features, and the people I know who have them really like the phones and Mango. That said, I look at it as "I am interested in buying a WP7 phone in spite of what Ballmer says, because I still don't understand why he is CEO. You cannot tell people they are dumb for buying something as popular as Android handsets which also have great features.
At first it does, but then I read that since Skype is a foreign company, Microsoft could use its euro-dollar cash to buy the company with "pre-tax dollars", at least from a US corporation perspective. In other words, the money used to buy Skype was never taxed, so the effective price could have been at much as 35% lower (the US corporate tax rate.)
What surprises me is that the board didn't force Ballmer to resign after Yahoo plunged in price. How many people get that close to making a multi-billion dollar mistake and still keep their job?
Hell, it took literally years and a bunch of lawsuits to buy a whitebox PC without Microsoft getting paid for the OS even if you didn't want it and weren't going to use it... you think they'd hesitate to insist vendors ship something locked down to them?
Not true at all. Lots of vendors sold PCs without Windows. I don't think I ever bought a desktop PC with Windows pre-installed. They may not have been big name OEMs, but it was always easy to get a whitebox PC, especially rackmount servers. That is still the case.
You have to compare the iPad to the Kindle DX, not the 6" Kindle. Since many of my books are technical, I wanted a larger screen to view diagrams and tables, for example. The Kindle DX is only about $60 less than a refurb iPad, and doesn't compare in terms of features such as being able to run apps, web browsing, email, etc. If I was just reading paperbacks, the 6" Kindle would have made sense, but it's too small for technical books.
I bought an iPad primarily for the ability to read Kindle books. If this move impacts the price of those books, my iPad will almost become a very expensive brick. Of course my question: What if I buy a Kindle book on the PC, then sync the iPad? Do I have to pay Apple for that? If so, Apple becomes a rent-seeker, plain an simple, which is far worse than anything Microsoft every did. Microsoft never asked for compensation for the content I loaded using Windows apps. IANAL, but I also have to wonder if there isn't a restraint of trade issue in this policy, too.
If this goes through, I will avoid buying Apple products in the future. Given the increasing competition in the marketplace, I probably won't have to, either.
So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever.
Not sure about your numbers...
I have done some iPhone programming using XCode and Interface Builder. I have also used Monodevelop and Monotouch, which I found to be preferable. In my view, using XCode/Objective-C and IB is like being dragged back to the 90s. I have a friend who has completely dismissed WP7, who does a lot of iPhone programming. But what does he use? Monotouch because the Apple dev tools and Objective-C are archaic.
I started using Expression Blend and Visual Studio, which you can get for free, to try WP7 programming. The contrast between ExB/VS and IB/XCode is shocking from a developer's point of view. I would guess a team using the Microsoft tools could be anywhere from 2x to 5x more productive than an iPhone team, simply because the Microsoft development tools are that much better. No way is WP7 Vista. The dark horse might be Microsoft, but as developers start to realize how much better the platform is from a programming perspective, I think that will change. As soon as my carrier has a WP7 phone, I will be getting one.
He's a VC - he only needs one of his horses to come in to make money. Who cares if all the others crash and burn - he'll still own their ideas anyway...
Indeed. I have a hard time with Thiel's proposition. I think it would be bad for most of the students who take it. Sure, four of the twenty might be successful, according to VC rule of thumb VC math, but the other 16 would probably be worse off. Having dealt with VCs over time, I have concluded that they are gatekeepers of money for the most part. They don't really have much better insight into the Next Big Thing than anyone else does. All they do is fish in barrels that float into their doors. Think about what has to have occurred before the start-up company founders walk in the VC's doors:
The founders have an idea. (~90% of the population can do this)
They put ideas on paper and start to think seriously about creating a business(~40% of the population)
The founders quit their jobs or drop out of school, or spend much less time at either (~15% of the population)
The enterprise is successful enough to keep the founders going for while, so they go to a VC for money to expand (~1% of the population)
In other words, by the time founders of a company walk in the doors of a VC firm, the VC is dealing with a select group of people motivated enough to create a functioning company. The population of entrepreneurs the VC sees is distilled to the people who have the best chance of succeeding under any circumstances. What is rather shocking to me about that is that even with the best people walking in the door, VC firms still only manage a 20% success rate. Of course they will claim that they can make an objective evaluation of a potential new product of service, but if that were so they wouldn't have to wait for people to walk in the door. They would come up with the idea themselves and hire people to implement it.
I think Thiel's proposal is a "heads I win tails you lose" proposition for most of the people who would take his offer. But casinos offer the same deal and they are a lot more fun. When my partners and I went to VCs for money, one told us our idea would never be successful (later our more successful competitors proved them wrong), and one told us that they reservations about our team (They were right, dysfunction ultimately destroyed the company). I asked a third VC who he thought the best CEO in the tech world was at the time. He said "Greg Reyes"
If you really want to make the best of what the VC community has to offer, let them come to you. If you and your co-founders really have a good idea and have made it work, they will find you. If they come to you, you will get better terms and probably a better VC partner, since those who knock on your door were smart enough to find you in the first place.
I think Microsoft probably intended this to be the "developer launch". Microsoft knows that developers will be buying the phone first, because it has a chance of becoming popular, and the opportunities for making money on an app are a lot better with a new phone, given the saturation in the iPhone and Android markets. I have an iMac, two iPods and an iPad. I also do programming in XCode, which is kind of a shock after using Visual Studio. Apple may know how to design beautiful hardware, but their development tools are an anachronism. Objective-C, C#, Python or Java, have you you ever talked to a developer who said "I wish I could program in Objective-C" instead the other languages? Interface Builder? IBOutlet, IBAction? Are you kidding me? I feel like I have gone back in time when using Apple dev products. The Visual Studio / Silverlight environment Microsoft offers looks a lot more compelling in comparison.
As you state, there are other factors that determine when someone gets a new phone. I still have the Palm Pre (The Betamax of smartphones) I bought when it was released, and have toyed with the idea of getting a new Android. I also thought about getting an iPhone, but that would require switching carriers, which I don't want to do.
I plan to get a WP7 phone without a contract for now, just for development. My guess is that Microsoft will be releasing updates fast, which should take care of "cut and paste" and other glaring deficiencies. But by getting the phone in the hands of developers now, there will be more apps out there for consumers when the software features are more competitive. By the time the contracts run out for many consumers, the WP7 phone should be a more compelling offer.
Given that the Microsoft board didn't give Ballmer a full bonus this year, I suspect they are looking for someone new already. My guess is that if Windows 7 Phone isn't a huge success, Microsoft will have a new CEO next year. It's a mystery to me as to how he has managed to stay in the position this long, given his many blunders.
A number of people trade in their cars within that time frame, just because they want something new or larger or smaller. Here's a PDF of a study done in Salt Lake City with lots of interesting graphs, including a survey of ownership times.
My guess is that when the manufacturing deficit of buying a new hybrid is compared to buying a used high MPG car, the hybrid is a bit questionable in terms of carbon savings, as is suggested in this Wired article, especially if it is traded in frequently. Also note hybrids still require oil changes, coolant flushes, filters and all sorts of other peripherals that release carbon during production and take up landfill space, probably as HAZMAT. A huge benefit of electric cars is that the service requirements and items are significantly reduced, also lowering the carbon footprint. This suggests to me that real carbon savings aren't achieved unless the car is all electric. Buying hybrid is like buying a Swiss watch. It has its own merit, but ultimately it is a piece of jewelry.
Replacing Ballmer isn't going to change any of that. A new CEO might excite the board and top investors a little, perhaps shuffle some HR/management policies around a little. But in the end, the same issues that are inherent in being a company of that size are still going to be there.
That's really note true. Look at what Alan Mullaly has done at Ford.
CEOs can make a enormous difference. That's why they get paid so much. Unfortunately, most aren't worth it. But people like Mulally and Jobs are. If Microsoft got a CEO of their caliber, it would be something to see.
The more I use XCode and IB, the more relevant #4 becomes. Anyone who has used Visual Studio will be shocked at what an archaic POS XCode and IB are. If you want to go back 10 years in development time, write software for an iPhone.
I think Apple is nearing the end of its run for the smartphone market. If Microsoft can do a decent job with Mobile 7, no doubt large numbers of developers will move to Visual Studio Express, etc, given how bad XCode and IB are.
It still comes down to tools. On that basis, if Apple doesn't improve Xcode drastically, they will slowly lose market share. I don't know what they will do about Objective-C, though.
My guess is that in a few years, Android and possibly Windows Mobile 7+ will be dominant, just because the tools and languages are so much better than what Apple has to offer at the moment. Flame away, those who are so inclined, but I have never heard anyone say they would prefer to program in Objective-C over Java, C++, Python, or the.Net languages.
I don't know what the Rim tools are like, or what HP will do with Palm, so those could be contenders, too. Right now Apple is riding on the appeal of their hardware, but the development environment and codebase for their devices leaves a lot to be desired compared other platforms. Eventually the mass of developers will move to the more productive platforms, IMHO. YMMV.
Student loans provided by the Federal Gov. have the same effect as mortgage loans provided by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae- they raise the price of the underlying product. Just like cheap credit inflated the cost of housing, gov. provided loans are inflating the cost of education. In addition, educational institutions like to tempt students with the promise of high paying jobs (just like that house will be worth more in the future!), leading many students into oppressive debt burdens. Unlike many home loans, however, default on a student loan is a lot more problematic.
If education had less government subsidy, it would probably be cheaper or at least more cost effective. Everything the government subsidizes to "help the people" distorts markets by raising the price or over production. It can also encourage other risky behaviors. This is not to be confused with long lead time gov. led efforts, such as basic research, environmental studies and the like, in which a "market" either would not exist or would be dysfunctional due to lack or participants. Government clearly has important roles. Providing student loans is not one of them.
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This comment by m_m offers a good perspective:
"Let me posit that HFT has driven a lot of people out of business: the specialists, execution brokers and day-traders who used to collect the large rents built into the system in the days of old. HFT and algo-trading practitioners are rent-seekers too, but their rents are far smaller. And the vast majority of the whining you hear is from exactly the people that HFT has displaced. I have read or heard nothing about how medium-to-long-term investors are being disadvantaged by HFT; to the contrary, their costs have gone down substantially. As for destabilizing the system, sure, a lot can be done to improve the market structure and micro-structure. But we have just come through one of the most volatile and unstable periods ever; did you really expect this or any market structure to survive through this without showing the occasional crack? And what you got, even then, was the Flash Crash and some instances of erroneous behavior, the most egregious of which was Knight. In the days of specialist-and-broker intermediation, we got Black Monday without any macro stress of remotely comparable scale; we got lots of (human) fat finger errors all the time, too. So, are you saying that it is morally and socially acceptable for one group of error-prone humans to extract large rents from the system, and it is not morally or socially acceptable for another group of (differently) error-prone humans to extract much smaller rents?"
If you think HFT is bad, then you must think $0.99 individual tracks, MP3 players, and digital distribution are also bad since the RIAA no longer dictates how you buy and what you do with the content. It's really not that much different.
I have a WP7 phone. It works quite well. Could it be improved? Yes. It is surprising that an ex-employee might be critical of his former employer? No. But one thing to note about phones - They are more like jewelry than computing devices for most consumers. As a consumer, I would be content with an iPhone, and Android phone, or a WP7 phone. The critical apps are telephony, search, mapping, and photo/video. All smartphones have this. Facebook, twitter, games, music apps, etc are largely supported on all phones now, too. Apps are becoming less of a discriminator in a purchase decision. Anecdotal evidence shows that now that iPhones and Android phones are ubiquitous, teens are becoming more interested in WP7 phones because fewer people have them. "iPhone? Like that's so yesterday!" If Microsoft and Nokia work on a good advertising campaign, they have a good chance for success, especially since the carriers don't subsidize phone in Europe and China.
I picked a WP7 phone because I can program it using
People who even walk in looking for Windows Phones are steered towards Android phones.
I will recount my experience: I wanted to by a WP7 handset during the promotion Microsoft ran last year. I set up an appointment at the store to buy the phone. Get to the store and find out they are out of stock. Store people call around and find one left at a store a few blocks away, so I put that one on hold. Go to the other store to get the phone, and the sales rep suggests I should get an iPhone or Android handset instead.
I tell him I want the WP7 phone because I like the development environment for it. That still isn't good enough, so he asks if I am sure. I then ask him what he knows about WP7. Has he ever used it? No. I ask what he knows about WP7. He said he knew nothing about it, he was just more familiar with iPhone and Android.
After I finally convince the guy that I really did want the WP7 phone I had put on hold at the store, he activates it. Turns out he didn't really activate it, he bricked it. Obviously I should have checked it while in the store, but I never had a problem before. I took the phone to another store the next day to have it reset after spending an hour with customer support to try a manual activation which failed. Clearly the rep had no training for the phone. I have a hard time believing a typical consumer would put up with half of the hassle I did before they would say: "Give me an iPhone, this one doesn't work." It seems to me that Microsoft has totally dropped the ball with the sales force at the carriers. They should not be pushing the phone until the store reps are comfortable with it and show at least a little enthusiasm for the device. Microsoft should spend some of the marketing money flying reps to Hawaii or Vail or Jamaica or wherever sales rep paradise might be.
As for WP7, I do like what Microsoft has done in general. There are still rough edges here and there, but I would guess they will be addressed in future phone releases. The voice translation is amazingly good, and the Bing music recognition feature works really well. Turn by Turn navigation works well, too. I have not had any problems with crashes or the disappearing keyboard. The active tiles are nice, and a lot better than the icon infestation of iOS. I think it is at least equal to iOS and Android in terms of utility. But for me, the big selling point is not the phone, but rather Visual Studio and Expression Blend, which make app development much nicer that the pain of XCode. I haven't done much with Android, but colleagues who are developing for it tell me they would prefer to use Visual Studio, and that the fragmentation of Android really is a problem from a QA perspective.
To be good at any type of knowledge or artisan work, a person has to have some level of personal curiosity or interest in what the job involves. My guess is that most of the people who attend this event are doing because they want/need a job. The kind of person I would be interested in hiring would already be doing some programming in his or her free time. There will be a few people who attend who will discover that programming is something they really enjoy, but that group will be a small minority. OTOH, many others will find they dislike programming and will stay away from it.
Hopefully someone is going to track the results over time. Maybe a few of the attendees with initiative will create a database app to do just that.
North Korean State Television announced it will be the only approved tablet when available!
putting aside allegiances for a moment and looking at this from a purely engineering standpoint: bad ASS!!
My guess is that the real story behind this incident is very different from what we might be getting from any source.
There are really two topics of discussion regarding the FTT.
If you listen to the interview, Gates appears to be pondering the merit of a FTT in order to increase the amount of revenue available for aid, presumably foreign aid for promotion of health care in poor countries. He says nothing about HFT, and also notes that if the FTT is too high, it could have negative consequences.
In my view, it is an extremely bad idea, especially if cast in terms of the "immorality of HFT", which few if any in politics understand to begin with. How is it that political figures are anointed best qualified to determine how long a person or legal entity owns a stock? If a FTT is matter or "market morality", what are we to make of short selling? How long will it be until someone in politics determines short sellers are Evildoers and should pay more FTT than buyers? Maybe the FTT should be higher for:
::= evilco | evilcoes evilco
::= tobacco | gambling | oil | coal | software
evilcoes
evilco
because we all know some people think software companies are evil, too.
What happens if someone has a losing stock position? Do they get a refund of the FTT? Should they only get if refund if they were long? People are complaining about HFT because they believe it distorts the markets, yet at the same time want to apply an FTT which can and will be changed to according to political whims. This in order to prevent market distortions? Speaking of markets and tax policies designed to benefit the public,what of the $140 BILLION the taxpayer just put into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two entities that are back for more... The FTT is one of the worst ideas to be floated in response to the financial implosion. Full disclosure - I am an occasional day trader. What am I to make of the person who criticizes me for not holding a stock for a $ARBITRARY_TIME_PERIOD? Am I therefore entitled to criticize someone for upgrading from an iPhone 4 to a 4S? "You should not be allowed to change your phone more than once per year without paying an extra tax. I see you bought new clothes when your old duds were fine. You should pay more tax for that, too! Etc." That would be absurd. If you do or do not want to transact for a legal good or service, that is your choice. I have a hard time thinking of any transaction tax policy that actually accomplished anything good, but I can think of several that had deleterious effects.
I plan to get a WP7 phone when the new handsets are out. They do have a number of nice features, and the people I know who have them really like the phones and Mango. That said, I look at it as "I am interested in buying a WP7 phone in spite of what Ballmer says, because I still don't understand why he is CEO. You cannot tell people they are dumb for buying something as popular as Android handsets which also have great features.
Sounds like a repeat to me.
At first it does, but then I read that since Skype is a foreign company, Microsoft could use its euro-dollar cash to buy the company with "pre-tax dollars", at least from a US corporation perspective. In other words, the money used to buy Skype was never taxed, so the effective price could have been at much as 35% lower (the US corporate tax rate.)
What surprises me is that the board didn't force Ballmer to resign after Yahoo plunged in price. How many people get that close to making a multi-billion dollar mistake and still keep their job?
Not true at all. Lots of vendors sold PCs without Windows. I don't think I ever bought a desktop PC with Windows pre-installed. They may not have been big name OEMs, but it was always easy to get a whitebox PC, especially rackmount servers. That is still the case.
I will pose this question to people who have used XCode/IB/Objective-C and Visual Studio/Expression Blend/C#:
Which would you prefer to use every day?
You have to compare the iPad to the Kindle DX, not the 6" Kindle. Since many of my books are technical, I wanted a larger screen to view diagrams and tables, for example. The Kindle DX is only about $60 less than a refurb iPad, and doesn't compare in terms of features such as being able to run apps, web browsing, email, etc. If I was just reading paperbacks, the 6" Kindle would have made sense, but it's too small for technical books.
I bought an iPad primarily for the ability to read Kindle books. If this move impacts the price of those books, my iPad will almost become a very expensive brick. Of course my question: What if I buy a Kindle book on the PC, then sync the iPad? Do I have to pay Apple for that? If so, Apple becomes a rent-seeker, plain an simple, which is far worse than anything Microsoft every did. Microsoft never asked for compensation for the content I loaded using Windows apps. IANAL, but I also have to wonder if there isn't a restraint of trade issue in this policy, too.
If this goes through, I will avoid buying Apple products in the future. Given the increasing competition in the marketplace, I probably won't have to, either.
So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever.
Not sure about your numbers...
I have done some iPhone programming using XCode and Interface Builder. I have also used Monodevelop and Monotouch, which I found to be preferable. In my view, using XCode/Objective-C and IB is like being dragged back to the 90s. I have a friend who has completely dismissed WP7, who does a lot of iPhone programming. But what does he use? Monotouch because the Apple dev tools and Objective-C are archaic.
I started using Expression Blend and Visual Studio, which you can get for free, to try WP7 programming. The contrast between ExB/VS and IB/XCode is shocking from a developer's point of view. I would guess a team using the Microsoft tools could be anywhere from 2x to 5x more productive than an iPhone team, simply because the Microsoft development tools are that much better. No way is WP7 Vista. The dark horse might be Microsoft, but as developers start to realize how much better the platform is from a programming perspective, I think that will change. As soon as my carrier has a WP7 phone, I will be getting one.
FB SSO? NFW.
He's a VC - he only needs one of his horses to come in to make money. Who cares if all the others crash and burn - he'll still own their ideas anyway...
Indeed. I have a hard time with Thiel's proposition. I think it would be bad for most of the students who take it. Sure, four of the twenty might be successful, according to VC rule of thumb VC math, but the other 16 would probably be worse off. Having dealt with VCs over time, I have concluded that they are gatekeepers of money for the most part. They don't really have much better insight into the Next Big Thing than anyone else does. All they do is fish in barrels that float into their doors. Think about what has to have occurred before the start-up company founders walk in the VC's doors:
In other words, by the time founders of a company walk in the doors of a VC firm, the VC is dealing with a select group of people motivated enough to create a functioning company. The population of entrepreneurs the VC sees is distilled to the people who have the best chance of succeeding under any circumstances. What is rather shocking to me about that is that even with the best people walking in the door, VC firms still only manage a 20% success rate. Of course they will claim that they can make an objective evaluation of a potential new product of service, but if that were so they wouldn't have to wait for people to walk in the door. They would come up with the idea themselves and hire people to implement it.
I think Thiel's proposal is a "heads I win tails you lose" proposition for most of the people who would take his offer. But casinos offer the same deal and they are a lot more fun. When my partners and I went to VCs for money, one told us our idea would never be successful (later our more successful competitors proved them wrong), and one told us that they reservations about our team (They were right, dysfunction ultimately destroyed the company). I asked a third VC who he thought the best CEO in the tech world was at the time. He said "Greg Reyes"
If you really want to make the best of what the VC community has to offer, let them come to you. If you and your co-founders really have a good idea and have made it work, they will find you. If they come to you, you will get better terms and probably a better VC partner, since those who knock on your door were smart enough to find you in the first place.
Sure, I was hoping it would be a new OS or gadget announcement I could use, not the ability to buy tracks I already have.
Instead we got a parts list:
"Some assembly required"
I think Microsoft probably intended this to be the "developer launch". Microsoft knows that developers will be buying the phone first, because it has a chance of becoming popular, and the opportunities for making money on an app are a lot better with a new phone, given the saturation in the iPhone and Android markets. I have an iMac, two iPods and an iPad. I also do programming in XCode, which is kind of a shock after using Visual Studio. Apple may know how to design beautiful hardware, but their development tools are an anachronism. Objective-C, C#, Python or Java, have you you ever talked to a developer who said "I wish I could program in Objective-C" instead the other languages? Interface Builder? IBOutlet, IBAction? Are you kidding me? I feel like I have gone back in time when using Apple dev products. The Visual Studio / Silverlight environment Microsoft offers looks a lot more compelling in comparison.
As you state, there are other factors that determine when someone gets a new phone. I still have the Palm Pre (The Betamax of smartphones) I bought when it was released, and have toyed with the idea of getting a new Android. I also thought about getting an iPhone, but that would require switching carriers, which I don't want to do.
I plan to get a WP7 phone without a contract for now, just for development. My guess is that Microsoft will be releasing updates fast, which should take care of "cut and paste" and other glaring deficiencies. But by getting the phone in the hands of developers now, there will be more apps out there for consumers when the software features are more competitive. By the time the contracts run out for many consumers, the WP7 phone should be a more compelling offer.
Given that the Microsoft board didn't give Ballmer a full bonus this year, I suspect they are looking for someone new already. My guess is that if Windows 7 Phone isn't a huge success, Microsoft will have a new CEO next year. It's a mystery to me as to how he has managed to stay in the position this long, given his many blunders.
What kind of moron only keeps a car 5 years?
A number of people trade in their cars within that time frame, just because they want something new or larger or smaller. Here's a PDF of a study done in Salt Lake City with lots of interesting graphs, including a survey of ownership times.
My guess is that when the manufacturing deficit of buying a new hybrid is compared to buying a used high MPG car, the hybrid is a bit questionable in terms of carbon savings, as is suggested in this Wired article, especially if it is traded in frequently. Also note hybrids still require oil changes, coolant flushes, filters and all sorts of other peripherals that release carbon during production and take up landfill space, probably as HAZMAT. A huge benefit of electric cars is that the service requirements and items are significantly reduced, also lowering the carbon footprint. This suggests to me that real carbon savings aren't achieved unless the car is all electric. Buying hybrid is like buying a Swiss watch. It has its own merit, but ultimately it is a piece of jewelry.
Replacing Ballmer isn't going to change any of that. A new CEO might excite the board and top investors a little, perhaps shuffle some HR/management policies around a little. But in the end, the same issues that are inherent in being a company of that size are still going to be there.
That's really note true. Look at what Alan Mullaly has done at Ford.
CEOs can make a enormous difference. That's why they get paid so much. Unfortunately, most aren't worth it. But people like Mulally and Jobs are. If Microsoft got a CEO of their caliber, it would be something to see.
The more I use XCode and IB, the more relevant #4 becomes. Anyone who has used Visual Studio will be shocked at what an archaic POS XCode and IB are. If you want to go back 10 years in development time, write software for an iPhone.
I think Apple is nearing the end of its run for the smartphone market. If Microsoft can do a decent job with Mobile 7, no doubt large numbers of developers will move to Visual Studio Express, etc, given how bad XCode and IB are.
Meaning Flash, Silverlight, and / or HTML5?
It still comes down to tools. On that basis, if Apple doesn't improve Xcode drastically, they will slowly lose market share. I don't know what they will do about Objective-C, though.
My guess is that in a few years, Android and possibly Windows Mobile 7+ will be dominant, just because the tools and languages are so much better than what Apple has to offer at the moment. Flame away, those who are so inclined, but I have never heard anyone say they would prefer to program in Objective-C over Java, C++, Python, or the .Net languages.
I don't know what the Rim tools are like, or what HP will do with Palm, so those could be contenders, too. Right now Apple is riding on the appeal of their hardware, but the development environment and codebase for their devices leaves a lot to be desired compared other platforms. Eventually the mass of developers will move to the more productive platforms, IMHO. YMMV.
YABF - Yet Another Ballmer Flop.
When is the Microsoft board going to get a clue and send him off to pursue "personal interests"?
Then his kids will say "Can we get iPhones now?"
Student loans provided by the Federal Gov. have the same effect as mortgage loans provided by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae- they raise the price of the underlying product. Just like cheap credit inflated the cost of housing, gov. provided loans are inflating the cost of education. In addition, educational institutions like to tempt students with the promise of high paying jobs (just like that house will be worth more in the future!), leading many students into oppressive debt burdens. Unlike many home loans, however, default on a student loan is a lot more problematic.
If education had less government subsidy, it would probably be cheaper or at least more cost effective. Everything the government subsidizes to "help the people" distorts markets by raising the price or over production. It can also encourage other risky behaviors. This is not to be confused with long lead time gov. led efforts, such as basic research, environmental studies and the like, in which a "market" either would not exist or would be dysfunctional due to lack or participants. Government clearly has important roles. Providing student loans is not one of them.