Your post reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a friend of mine who is an excellent software salesman. There is a positive and negative way to offer criticism. Programmer/Engineering types usually go about this in a logical, aggressive way that comes across as negative to other people. This approach works fine, and is very efficient, when dealing with inanimate objects without feelings. People who excel at sales and management approach these issues differently. I have had conversations with people who can point out my shortcomings and make me feel very good about myself at the same time.
Really, your post points out the differencese between optimisim and pessimism very well. Programmers have a pessimistic approach by nature. They believe that things are inherently broken and need to be fixed. Optimistic types believe that everything and everyone is good, but can be a little better with some help. The same results can be achieved with both approaches.
I understand your point, but putting together a website is hardly coding a game. Sometimes a good idea and a little help is all you need to make lots of money on the web. Look at that kid with the hokey million dollar site.
RMS is MUCH more 'religious' when it comes to software than any of those people. Gates and Jobs are in it for the power and money. Stallman has dedicated his life to creating free software with a fanaticsim rarely seen anywhere. Corporate CEOs would change their mind completely if they thought they could make more money from
Open Source software.
"telling hardware manufacturers what to do is immoral" simply isn't going to cut it as an argument for most people.
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the relatively small number of software publishing CEOs don't constitute most people. I think most people, at least most who understand what's going on, think Microsoft, Apple, Sony and many other major IP companies that are attempting to force DRM are using evil, immoral tactics. If the open source community uses the same tactics as Microsoft and Apple how are they any better?
I'm not sure the term bully precludes the fact that a person can be correct. Just because Gates was in a legally defensible position doesn't mean he wasn't a bully.
Learn to spell if you want to get your point across:"...the thrid world..."
You might want to change that to "Learn to type" or "Learn to proofread so spelling/grammar/typing Nazis don't bring it up later". I'm guessing the poster can spellthird since he got all of the other words right.
The real estate market has not historically always had significant or even positive gains. There was a time, not all that long ago, when mortgage rates were 15% and the real estate market was extremely stagnant. Eventually real estate will calm down again.
Exactly. If you thought the stock price was going to keep going up forever you were crazy. Nothing will continue on that kind of meteoric rise over the long term. This isn't even a correction, this is just a day or two of trading after a 'lower than expected' earnings report. The company is not in trouble and hasn't lost any of these major lawsuits. I expect the stock price to be back up in a week or two.
The law has to be applied equally. I don't see how a judge can say that the man broke the law and we have to punish him, but we can ignore the nurse breaking the law. Real problem is your state has a faulty law. If using an alcohol swab to draw blood doesn't impact the test at all that law should be repealed. It's hard to complain about a case where the rules are followed.
So, is the (lack of) empathy and experience a cause or a result? Do certain 'geeky' minds lack the ability to gain these skills, or are they just too preoccupied and elitist to care? Are the socially inept because they are geeks, or are they geeks because they are socially inept?
There's one thing I don't understand. Many of the people I know with extremely good 'social skills', people in sales, marketing, etc..., are very intelligent. They can 'analyze' a conversation and direct in in any direction they want it to go. Why is it that, so called, analytic personalities can't figure this out?
It's interesting that so many 'geeks' have no social skills because they think they are too smart and social interaction is beneath them, but some of the smartest people out there are the ones that can successfully make friends and socialize with customers, clients, vendors and peers.
Obviously, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Microsoft and a few others have more money than they know what to do with. I also agree that not all of their acquisitions will be profitably, but that's just business. No company that makes that kind of purchase expects every investment they make to be a good one. OTOH, they are purchasing these companies with money they actually have. We are not looking at VCs or IPOs to fund these purchases and that's a huge differnce between now and the last bubble.
I also diagree with your assessment that ad revenue won't be able to generate the revenue to recoup the investments. Look at the HUGE tv industry that is completely supported by ad revenue and has been for years. Look at the postal service which is primarily funded by bulk mailings and advertisements. Newspapers, magazines, professional sporting events, the list goes on and on.Advertising is a huge money maker and even after adjustments are made in the market I believe any site with tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors will be able to achieve profitability in a relatively short amount of time. As you said, bandwidth and hardware costs have dropped dramatically, so the only challenge here is keeping all of these sites that were purchased popular.
Since they are acting only to censor themselves (a distinction beyond the wit of one BBC Radio 4 listener who called an afternoon news programme to ask why they couldn't censor sexually oriented websites while they're at it) I fail to see the hypocrisy in their actions.
Plus they do censor results from sexually oriented websites. My google interface has a 'safe search' option, I think enabled by default, which will filter most of the porn sites. Appearantly the BBC Radio 4 listener forgot they enabled google to give porn results.
I disagree for a couple reasons. First, during the last boom all we heard about was funding, burn rate, anticipated profitability date, etc... Right now all I'm hearing about is actual revenue and actual profits. Google and Yahoo are making money selling ads and advertisers are making sales from the ads. This may change. I'm sure there will be many people/companies out there that have a poor product, poor website or poor marketing overall that will complain about click fraud and sue Google. I'm also sure that there will be a natural correction of the bidding process and people that aren't making sales will stop advertising, but overall it's a good model that's working.
Second, over the last 10 years technology has come a long way. Many more people have computers than did 10 years ago. Many, many people use ebay even though they are not 'computer people'. Costs have come down, bandwidth has come up, highspeed is available and relatively affordable, the market is ripe for the picking. In the last bubble people were trying to sell dog food online and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. Now we are using the web to promote existing businesses and get advertisements in front of people. Even with it's click-fraud issues, the pay-per-click model is much more measurable and quantifiable than TV advertising.
Great point, which is even more appropriate in China. The Chinese culture has a history of being resistant to change and have not repsonded well when foriegners have attempted to force them to change quickly. Make much more sense to give the chinese people access to some of Google's content than have the government shut them off from the rest of the world completely.
Now if this was occuring in a 'free' country like the US, Canada, EU, etc... I would have a real problem with it. I think it's interesting that Google is giving concessions like this to the Chinese government, but at the same time is fighting the White House on their request for search statistics that would result in a censorship law being passed in the US.
is no more politically sophisticated than my 10th grade english class was.
Which makes them about 10 times more sophisticated than the rest of America that hit the peak of their political sophistication in the 10th grade and have beeen declining ever since.
yea but once you have access to the source, they can come after you for copying their implementation.
So the project forks and gets moved to an 'offshore' server (outside the US and EU) and all updates are submitted anonymously. Microsoft hasn't been able to stop file sharing, cracking and 'pirating' in general, they can't stop this either. That's why they didn't want to release the source code to start with.
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Your post reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a friend of mine who is an excellent software salesman. There is a positive and negative way to offer criticism. Programmer/Engineering types usually go about this in a logical, aggressive way that comes across as negative to other people. This approach works fine, and is very efficient, when dealing with inanimate objects without feelings. People who excel at sales and management approach these issues differently. I have had conversations with people who can point out my shortcomings and make me feel very good about myself at the same time.
Really, your post points out the differencese between optimisim and pessimism very well. Programmers have a pessimistic approach by nature. They believe that things are inherently broken and need to be fixed. Optimistic types believe that everything and everyone is good, but can be a little better with some help. The same results can be achieved with both approaches.
I understand your point, but putting together a website is hardly coding a game. Sometimes a good idea and a little help is all you need to make lots of money on the web. Look at that kid with the hokey million dollar site.
RMS is no more religious than any of these people
RMS is MUCH more 'religious' when it comes to software than any of those people. Gates and Jobs are in it for the power and money. Stallman has dedicated his life to creating free software with a fanaticsim rarely seen anywhere. Corporate CEOs would change their mind completely if they thought they could make more money from Open Source software.
"telling hardware manufacturers what to do is immoral" simply isn't going to cut it as an argument for most people.
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the relatively small number of software publishing CEOs don't constitute most people. I think most people, at least most who understand what's going on, think Microsoft, Apple, Sony and many other major IP companies that are attempting to force DRM are using evil, immoral tactics. If the open source community uses the same tactics as Microsoft and Apple how are they any better?
I'm not sure the term bully precludes the fact that a person can be correct. Just because Gates was in a legally defensible position doesn't mean he wasn't a bully.
Learn to spell if you want to get your point across:"...the thrid world..."
You might want to change that to "Learn to type" or "Learn to proofread so spelling/grammar/typing Nazis don't bring it up later". I'm guessing the poster can spell third since he got all of the other words right.
The real estate market has not historically always had significant or even positive gains. There was a time, not all that long ago, when mortgage rates were 15% and the real estate market was extremely stagnant. Eventually real estate will calm down again.
Exactly. If you thought the stock price was going to keep going up forever you were crazy. Nothing will continue on that kind of meteoric rise over the long term. This isn't even a correction, this is just a day or two of trading after a 'lower than expected' earnings report. The company is not in trouble and hasn't lost any of these major lawsuits. I expect the stock price to be back up in a week or two.
The law has to be applied equally. I don't see how a judge can say that the man broke the law and we have to punish him, but we can ignore the nurse breaking the law. Real problem is your state has a faulty law. If using an alcohol swab to draw blood doesn't impact the test at all that law should be repealed. It's hard to complain about a case where the rules are followed.
I know no OS is perfect, but why charge for a solution to end a problem that your OS causes in the first place?
Because you can.
So, is the (lack of) empathy and experience a cause or a result? Do certain 'geeky' minds lack the ability to gain these skills, or are they just too preoccupied and elitist to care? Are the socially inept because they are geeks, or are they geeks because they are socially inept?
There's one thing I don't understand. Many of the people I know with extremely good 'social skills', people in sales, marketing, etc..., are very intelligent. They can 'analyze' a conversation and direct in in any direction they want it to go. Why is it that, so called, analytic personalities can't figure this out?
It's interesting that so many 'geeks' have no social skills because they think they are too smart and social interaction is beneath them, but some of the smartest people out there are the ones that can successfully make friends and socialize with customers, clients, vendors and peers.
Absolutely! After we are all fried to a crisp the earth will be back to business as usual.
Obviously, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Microsoft and a few others have more money than they know what to do with. I also agree that not all of their acquisitions will be profitably, but that's just business. No company that makes that kind of purchase expects every investment they make to be a good one. OTOH, they are purchasing these companies with money they actually have. We are not looking at VCs or IPOs to fund these purchases and that's a huge differnce between now and the last bubble.
I also diagree with your assessment that ad revenue won't be able to generate the revenue to recoup the investments. Look at the HUGE tv industry that is completely supported by ad revenue and has been for years. Look at the postal service which is primarily funded by bulk mailings and advertisements. Newspapers, magazines, professional sporting events, the list goes on and on.Advertising is a huge money maker and even after adjustments are made in the market I believe any site with tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors will be able to achieve profitability in a relatively short amount of time. As you said, bandwidth and hardware costs have dropped dramatically, so the only challenge here is keeping all of these sites that were purchased popular.
Since they are acting only to censor themselves (a distinction beyond the wit of one BBC Radio 4 listener who called an afternoon news programme to ask why they couldn't censor sexually oriented websites while they're at it) I fail to see the hypocrisy in their actions.
Plus they do censor results from sexually oriented websites. My google interface has a 'safe search' option, I think enabled by default, which will filter most of the porn sites. Appearantly the BBC Radio 4 listener forgot they enabled google to give porn results.
I disagree for a couple reasons. First, during the last boom all we heard about was funding, burn rate, anticipated profitability date, etc... Right now all I'm hearing about is actual revenue and actual profits. Google and Yahoo are making money selling ads and advertisers are making sales from the ads. This may change. I'm sure there will be many people/companies out there that have a poor product, poor website or poor marketing overall that will complain about click fraud and sue Google. I'm also sure that there will be a natural correction of the bidding process and people that aren't making sales will stop advertising, but overall it's a good model that's working. Second, over the last 10 years technology has come a long way. Many more people have computers than did 10 years ago. Many, many people use ebay even though they are not 'computer people'. Costs have come down, bandwidth has come up, highspeed is available and relatively affordable, the market is ripe for the picking. In the last bubble people were trying to sell dog food online and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. Now we are using the web to promote existing businesses and get advertisements in front of people. Even with it's click-fraud issues, the pay-per-click model is much more measurable and quantifiable than TV advertising.
I agree. A lame comparison, especially on the day after the palestinians elected a terrorist organization as their government.
I remember being in Jr. High at the time. There were HUNDREDS of Challenger jokes going around.
Yeah, because only INTELLIGENT Design has EULAs.
When I saw the headlines I thought someone had found Egyptian Hieroglyphs from aliens explaining how to break into OSX.
Guess my definition of Ancient isn't the same as the posters.
Great point, which is even more appropriate in China. The Chinese culture has a history of being resistant to change and have not repsonded well when foriegners have attempted to force them to change quickly. Make much more sense to give the chinese people access to some of Google's content than have the government shut them off from the rest of the world completely.
Now if this was occuring in a 'free' country like the US, Canada, EU, etc... I would have a real problem with it. I think it's interesting that Google is giving concessions like this to the Chinese government, but at the same time is fighting the White House on their request for search statistics that would result in a censorship law being passed in the US.
is no more politically sophisticated than my 10th grade english class was.
Which makes them about 10 times more sophisticated than the rest of America that hit the peak of their political sophistication in the 10th grade and have beeen declining ever since.
Actually, it's 5.5 times the size of earth, so not exactly earth size. In galactic terms, yes, in terms of habitability I'm guessing no.
yea but once you have access to the source, they can come after you for copying their implementation.
So the project forks and gets moved to an 'offshore' server (outside the US and EU) and all updates are submitted anonymously. Microsoft hasn't been able to stop file sharing, cracking and 'pirating' in general, they can't stop this either. That's why they didn't want to release the source code to start with.
Nobody should look at that code!
Actually, everybody should look at that code. They can't come after all of us.