Start a FOSS project, build up a reputation,
build up a community...
And how, pray tell, are your suppossed to eat as your're building up your precious reputation?
That's what venture capital does. It puts food on your table as you develop your product. It seems like an awfully successful system for something that's supposedly a sham.
The alternative is to fund everything out of pocket. If you have no financial resources, well then you're just another talented designer working at McDonalds.
Hear, hear. A sound knowledge of algorithms and data structures is constantly useful in everyday programming.
I've noticed that only people without such knowledge think it's not useful. They're the same people who come up with such ugly, clunky, brittle solutions to problems that have been brilliantly solved for many decades.
They're the same people who do a full bubble sort to determine the median value of an array.
It's a pity the OP quit after two years. The high-level theoretical stuff is where it really gets good.
The Arab world was the cornerstone of world civilization in the Middle Ages -- they invented the zero,
Ahem. The zero was invented a number of times, but the Arabs got the idea from India. The Mayans also invented zero for use in their calendars. Some say the classical Greeks also invented zero when they defined a point as kind of a line of zero length, though I don't know if I buy that argument.
To give the Arabians credit, they recognized its value and propogated the idea to Europe. They also came up with many original ideas themselves - but zero was not one of them.
From what I've read, and my own limited experience, psychopaths often do quite well in business, particularly in large, established companies where political skills are an advantage.
They might not do so well in small businesses, however. They have a tendency to make promises that can't, or can't be bothered to, keep.
Also, they lack empathy for the needs of the customers - or anyone else, for that matter. They are eventually viewed as toxic by many of their fellow employees and business associates.
I would think, however, that psychopaths would do better in non-capitalist systems. Such systems strongly favour those with political skills. In capitalist systems, manipulation can take you only so far. Eventually you must demonstrate your productivity.
By my estimates, Google will have to expand its revenues by 5 times in the next couple of years while sustaining its profit margins to make current prices inviting. That is an enormous undertaking.
98% / year revenue growth cannot be sustained for long in any but the smallest of companies. Indeed, it has already significantly slowed for Google. Exponential extrapolation is always a dangerous business.
What's more, Google has a rival - Yahoo - which will likely result in reduced profit margins. And the smell of profits has attracted the attention of that big fat stinky bear Microsoft.
One has to make too many optimistic assumptions to value Google at $280/share for my tastes. Course my opinion is worth everything you paid for it.
I never did invest in technologies during the dot.com era. I kept looking at the earnings and revenues and cash flow, and comparing them against those of companies like banks and railroads and toothpaste makers. And the tech companies never withstood the comparison.
For some reason, people seem to think a dollar earned by a tech company is worth more than a dollar earned by a grocery store. It's not true - they should be analyzed as an investment using identical financial criteria.
Google's price per revenues is about 16 based on last quarter's results. That is to say, for every dollar you invest, you get about 7 cents of annual sales. Even if every single nickel of revenue became profit (that is, they had 100% margins), the P/E would be 16.
Investors must be expecting pretty amazing growth for this company for a long, long time, as it maintains its profit margins all the while.
At these prices, no wonder they're making a stock offering. Time for investors to run screaming naked into the hills.
For example, I usually invest around $10,000 in a normal investment, $5000 in a slightly risky investment [a hunch], and $1000 in a highly risky investment [most IPOs and risky stocks].
There's nothing worse than being right about an investment for the right reasons, but failing to put a decent amount of money into it.
There's a reason why you want to invest a reasonable amount in every stock. It's so that you seriously think and research it before pulling the trigger.
If you invest too little in a stock, not only do not make much money, but you tend to get lazy. Instead of doing all that tiresome reading and analysis of the financial reports, circulars, credit rating reports, and so forth, you just say "what the heck, it's only beer money", and buy.
This is most important at high risk levels because that's where research really pays off. For 5-year investment-grade bonds, for example, research isn't as critical.
In general, people must be motivated or forced to do the right thing,
Well there's a healthy attitude.
Do you think companies are contributing to the GPL because they are forced to? Naw. They are contributing to open source software because it's in their best interest to do so.
For example, many large companies (eg, IBM) would like to develop their products for a popular operating system that is not under the control of a competing company. They don't want to be held hostage to MS.
As well, many companies would like to see improvements in an operating system everyone is using, without getting into the messy business of licensing operating systems themselves.
Also many companies might release software to the open source community
for public relations purposes, or as perks for their employees.
They make Linux improvements under GPL because that's what Linux is under. But if was under some other license they still do it because it serves their purposes.
A major result of economics is that self-interest often works to the benefit of all.
This is a case in point.
Except that license-free software is covered by copyright, so there are still legal tendrils. If someone wants to donate software to humanity, I suggest they release it into the public domain, and bugger all the politics.
While many people were disturbed by the dropping of the A-bombs, the Allied soldiers (not all American, by the way) were hugely relieved.
The Japanese soldiers were fanatical beyond belief.
The banzai (basically suicidal) charges, the Kamikaze pilots, and so on, gave the Americans a healthy respect for the Japanese commitment to
avoid defeat at all costs.
When Truman made the Decision, he put the lives of Allied troops as his first priority. He was right to do so.
Information wants to be free because sunshine is the best antiseptic.
Fine. You can begin by publicizing all of your personal, medical, and financial records, including your mother's maiden name, your card and PIN numbers, email addresses, account passwords, treatments for any STD's, and so forth.
That should leave you feeling good and sterilized.
And yet life expectancies continues to rise, so that most people live to a vigorous old age.
For every serious misdiagnosis, there may be dozens or even hundreds of successful treatments of serious ailments. We take the power and competency of modern medicine so much for granted that we are outraged by any failure.
It's a bizarre double standard. We become contemptuous of conventional medicine when it fails to achieve perfection, and rave about alternative medicine when it achieves even the slightest success.
What type of homeopathic (note my improved spelling) medicine did you take?
The types I'm familiar with involve repeatedly diluting some substance until sometimes not even a molecule remains, relying on the "memory" of the water for the cure.
As you are no doubt aware, there is an excellent chance that your improvements had nothing to do with the treatments. We get over most of our ailments all by ourselves. Whatever we were doing at the time tends to get the credit, whether it deserves it or not.
This is why conventional medicine relies so heavily on large, expensive, double-blind studies. It's too easy to be deceived otherwise.
Is it my imagination, or is mysticism and belief in half-baked theories on the rise?
Granted, some B.S. seems to be slowly dying out - astrology and belief in space alien visitations, for example. But others seem absolutely rampant. We are awash in homeophathic medicine, claims of psychic powers, and on and on. And, yes, I include religion in this.
I guess rationality and empiricism just aren't cool these days. Perhaps people mistake skepticism with closed mindedness. Or perhaps, deep down, they just don't care whether what they believe is true or not.
Stephen Chambers and his (ex)company Xogen has a patent or two on this. The fact that resonant electrolysis (which has been around before Chambers) is often claimed to exceed 100% efficiency is a big hint that it's pure bunkum.
Currently hydrogen electrolysis can exceed 90% efficiency, so there's not a lot of room for improvement in the real world.
Jokes seem to get increasingly modded down these days. I fell victim a few weeks ago. I think it's all the religious fundamentalists on/. - no sense of humour at all.
Okay, I got one. Why didn't Jesus replace the stone from the tomb when he rose from the dead?
Well, he was born in a barn.
There is one thing that they could do that no one would complain about: resign.
Thus sending a clear message to terrorists around the world - if there is an administration that opposes you, a terrorist attack will make them go away. In other words, terrorism works.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what venture capital does. It puts food on your table as you develop your product. It seems like an awfully successful system for something that's supposedly a sham.
The alternative is to fund everything out of pocket. If you have no financial resources, well then you're just another talented designer working at McDonalds.
I've noticed that only people without such knowledge think it's not useful. They're the same people who come up with such ugly, clunky, brittle solutions to problems that have been brilliantly solved for many decades.
They're the same people who do a full bubble sort to determine the median value of an array.
It's a pity the OP quit after two years. The high-level theoretical stuff is where it really gets good.
To give the Arabians credit, they recognized its value and propogated the idea to Europe. They also came up with many original ideas themselves - but zero was not one of them.
They might not do so well in small businesses, however. They have a tendency to make promises that can't, or can't be bothered to, keep. Also, they lack empathy for the needs of the customers - or anyone else, for that matter. They are eventually viewed as toxic by many of their fellow employees and business associates.
I would think, however, that psychopaths would do better in non-capitalist systems. Such systems strongly favour those with political skills. In capitalist systems, manipulation can take you only so far. Eventually you must demonstrate your productivity.
98% / year revenue growth cannot be sustained for long in any but the smallest of companies. Indeed, it has already significantly slowed for Google. Exponential extrapolation is always a dangerous business.
What's more, Google has a rival - Yahoo - which will likely result in reduced profit margins. And the smell of profits has attracted the attention of that big fat stinky bear Microsoft.
One has to make too many optimistic assumptions to value Google at $280/share for my tastes. Course my opinion is worth everything you paid for it.
But if they have credit card debt, they probably should not be investing in the stock market at all.
Paying off credit card debt should be assessed as if it were any other type of investment. How many investments do you know that...
I drool over such an investment. I wish I had credit card debt, just so I could pay it off!
Well, $1000 might be my annual beer budget. Or maybe I should call it "30-year-old malt scotch" money.
For some reason, people seem to think a dollar earned by a tech company is worth more than a dollar earned by a grocery store. It's not true - they should be analyzed as an investment using identical financial criteria.
Investors must be expecting pretty amazing growth for this company for a long, long time, as it maintains its profit margins all the while.
At these prices, no wonder they're making a stock offering. Time for investors to run screaming naked into the hills.
There's a reason why you want to invest a reasonable amount in every stock. It's so that you seriously think and research it before pulling the trigger.
If you invest too little in a stock, not only do not make much money, but you tend to get lazy. Instead of doing all that tiresome reading and analysis of the financial reports, circulars, credit rating reports, and so forth, you just say "what the heck, it's only beer money", and buy.
This is most important at high risk levels because that's where research really pays off. For 5-year investment-grade bonds, for example, research isn't as critical.
Booya, Jim.
To say people do things because they have a reason for doing so is a bit of tautology, don't you think?
Do you think companies are contributing to the GPL because they are forced to? Naw. They are contributing to open source software because it's in their best interest to do so.
For example, many large companies (eg, IBM) would like to develop their products for a popular operating system that is not under the control of a competing company. They don't want to be held hostage to MS.
As well, many companies would like to see improvements in an operating system everyone is using, without getting into the messy business of licensing operating systems themselves.
Also many companies might release software to the open source community for public relations purposes, or as perks for their employees.
They make Linux improvements under GPL because that's what Linux is under. But if was under some other license they still do it because it serves their purposes.
A major result of economics is that self-interest often works to the benefit of all. This is a case in point.
Except that license-free software is covered by copyright, so there are still legal tendrils. If someone wants to donate software to humanity, I suggest they release it into the public domain, and bugger all the politics.
Hockey sticks, ding-dong. Russians have hockey sticks.
The Japanese soldiers were fanatical beyond belief. The banzai (basically suicidal) charges, the Kamikaze pilots, and so on, gave the Americans a healthy respect for the Japanese commitment to avoid defeat at all costs.
When Truman made the Decision, he put the lives of Allied troops as his first priority. He was right to do so.
That should leave you feeling good and sterilized.
For every serious misdiagnosis, there may be dozens or even hundreds of successful treatments of serious ailments. We take the power and competency of modern medicine so much for granted that we are outraged by any failure.
It's a bizarre double standard. We become contemptuous of conventional medicine when it fails to achieve perfection, and rave about alternative medicine when it achieves even the slightest success.
The types I'm familiar with involve repeatedly diluting some substance until sometimes not even a molecule remains, relying on the "memory" of the water for the cure.
As you are no doubt aware, there is an excellent chance that your improvements had nothing to do with the treatments. We get over most of our ailments all by ourselves. Whatever we were doing at the time tends to get the credit, whether it deserves it or not.
This is why conventional medicine relies so heavily on large, expensive, double-blind studies. It's too easy to be deceived otherwise.
Granted, some B.S. seems to be slowly dying out - astrology and belief in space alien visitations, for example. But others seem absolutely rampant. We are awash in homeophathic medicine, claims of psychic powers, and on and on. And, yes, I include religion in this.
I guess rationality and empiricism just aren't cool these days. Perhaps people mistake skepticism with closed mindedness. Or perhaps, deep down, they just don't care whether what they believe is true or not.
And if not, should someone who should not vote be allowed to run for President?
Just wondering where your idea takes us.
Currently hydrogen electrolysis can exceed 90% efficiency, so there's not a lot of room for improvement in the real world.
Okay, I got one. Why didn't Jesus replace the stone from the tomb when he rose from the dead? Well, he was born in a barn.
Hey, I didn't say I had a good one...
We could call it The Spanish Lesson.