The major things i like about google's web based word app are:
1) it is someone else's responsibility to back it up, cluster it, load balance it, and improve it, 2) it is social, i can include other people in on my document edits easily, 3) i can effortlessly access it from anywhere, be it uni, work, home or a cafe.
Home based servers currently have none of the above, and until we get cheap at home clustering and easy ability to host apps on home adsl we still wont.
Right, lets role play here for a minute. I'm a phd coder employed at google. I have a good chunk of cash in google shares that will vest soonish. So I'm going to take that money and go and start a startup because?
Which wally thought that the primary motivation for programmers was making money?
Pretty much every study of programmers motivations i have ever read has shown them to be intrinsically motivated by the opportunity to solve puzzles, and to be able to hang out with birds of similar feather. The fact is that money isn't that much of a motivator for coders, provided there is sufficient to buy toys. The latest laptop. A 30" lcd into which to plug said laptop. A plasma telly and an xbox 360 on which to play halo.
Starting up a company is risky, there is a bucket load of work to do that isn't coding, and you have to stop talking to all the other coders who you like chatting with at work. Wtf?
Someone has NO CLUE how coders think. And this made it to the front page of slashdot how, exactly?
Your assumption is that people only buy product. In short, the aim of a creative company is to build up a back catalog of items to sell, where in fact, customers are actually interested in future content. Thus, people will buy copies of Firefly, even after having watched downloaded copies, because they are intent on sending a signal that future content along the lines of Firefly should be produced.
The real analog hole that the studios are trying to eliminate is the massive amount of legal content already in people's homes that the studios think is stopping people from buying new content.
I'm getting questions from some real trailing edgers about why their drm'd cds can't be ripped to their shiny ipods. It breaks me tht i can't give them a legal answer apart from the poor quality itunes tracks. And I dislike that even that one has the only 3 computers restriction that will bite them sooner or later.
No good answer yet. But I am sure the massive demand will draw out supply sooner rather than later.
Why do the big players not get the long tail fact that stopping people from seeing your stuff is suicidal? There is so much other good stuff out there fighting for attention, be it news sites, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, flashfilms, indie films, et bloody cetera.
The money is in editorial branding. And that is because editorial choice is a way of dealing with information overload. It's so freaking obvious, yet none of the majors seem to get it. Even when some english nightclub goes on to form a top selling dance mix brand, just by picking good tunes. This is the way it is done.
Not by making your software even more anti-usable. FFS.
You know, i kinda wished you hadn't pointed that out. Because I am almost invariably the smartest coder in the room, and yes, I can't hold a job to save my life. And yes, girls run away from me when they figure out just how smart I am.
Gar. I hate you now.:-)
And do we really want to?
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That saddens me. Why would you not want to help bright kids acheive their full potential? Are you afraid of change? Do you really prefer this current state? Or do you fear that bright kids will bring about the downfall of civilisation?
I am truly at a loss to understand that state of mind. Really.
Don't you see that it's not about being useful for joe average, but as a way for people to feed google pre-digested data feeds that describe their websites. This is a white hat search engine optimisation tool. And the fact that you can upload content using ftp to upload rss files just makes it a walk in the park. Really, too friggen easy.
The fact that I am thinking about uploading my local job site's content just so that i can actually search it is beside the point, right?;-)
If there is one thing where the iPod beats the living crap out of pdas, it is in the explain the UI in twenty words or less, over loud music, at a house party ease of use. As opposed to the only a geek could love it ui of pdas.
Difference between pitching at the bleeding edge as opposed to the middle of the adoption curve.
With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads? Because they are usually irrelevent, visually overloading, annoying, and frequently pointless. And with what? Firefox, plus a variety of home brewed hacks. Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads? No, I stopped watching TV and listening to radio a couple of years ago. What about in a magazine? Stopped reading them too. Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many? That, and the magazines got outpaced for relevence and speed to market by blogs.
The military powers are always looking upwards, when in fact a couple of guys in a crowd with a molotov cocktail and a camera crew can still win strategically. You can't beat guerrilla warfare with satelites.
Heh. I suspect you guys are harder hit in the US because of your CxO's tendency to be lemmings, compared to slightly more conservative CxO's out here in Aus.
Sure there is less work than 2000, but there is more work than there was in '95. So, meh. I think you are just being a fatalist.
And stuff will stop moving off shore just as soon as it becomes economically more viable to do it onshore. And that means you can either become cheaper, or more effective. Your choice.
If you can't utilise your intelligence to such a level that justifies why you should be paid so much more than those of us out here in the real world, I really don't see a problem with you failing. Really. Welcome to the real world.
Hint: I'm an Australian, I have both taken outsourced work from the US, and had my job outsourced to india. And, by god, we have been hit with some horrid trade deals thanks to the US of A. Really.
So, the question is, are you going to fight, or are you going to sit there and moan like some wussy girl's blouse?
There is a real difference between being a coder and a worker in a steel mill. In a steel mill, you are completely dependant on the mill owner continuing to decide to keep the mill operational. Mills are expensive pieces of capital equipment.
Whereas, being a coder doesn't take a lot of capital at all. In fact, I have the only real capital asset required on my lap right now...
DO you know which country has lost the most manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years? China. The cause? American automation techniques and technologies.
Manufacturing jobs are taking the same arc that farming jobs took over a hundred years ago with the widespread adoption of farm machinery. The same mass unemployment that actually created the pool of idle labour that fed the industrial revolution.
It's all down to whether the underemployed are going to continue to blame others for their misfortune, and thus not take responsibility for their situation, or if they take responsibility and decide to find something new to do.
Will be interesting to see which is the more prevalent approach.
Change in this case means fewer and lower paying jobs.
Yes, because there is a limited set of work to be done. Uhuh.
No. There is no limit to the amount of software that needs to be written. I can think of five or six desktop apps, about twenty webservices, and a fistful of embedded devices I need/want/desire.
Get out there and start being creative for chrissakes. Stop whinging that the invisible "them" is responsible for your misfortunes. It is all down to you. Anything else is a cop out.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm from Oz, ADSL is about the only home connectivity option we get. =)
The major things i like about google's web based word app are:
1) it is someone else's responsibility to back it up, cluster it, load balance it, and improve it,
2) it is social, i can include other people in on my document edits easily,
3) i can effortlessly access it from anywhere, be it uni, work, home or a cafe.
Home based servers currently have none of the above, and until we get cheap at home clustering and easy ability to host apps on home adsl we still wont.
True enough. I should have twigged that a magazine titled Fortune would have the world view that people are motivated to get rich. How silly of me. =)
Right, lets role play here for a minute. I'm a phd coder employed at google. I have a good chunk of cash in google shares that will vest soonish. So I'm going to take that money and go and start a startup because?
Which wally thought that the primary motivation for programmers was making money?
Pretty much every study of programmers motivations i have ever read has shown them to be intrinsically motivated by the opportunity to solve puzzles, and to be able to hang out with birds of similar feather. The fact is that money isn't that much of a motivator for coders, provided there is sufficient to buy toys. The latest laptop. A 30" lcd into which to plug said laptop. A plasma telly and an xbox 360 on which to play halo.
Starting up a company is risky, there is a bucket load of work to do that isn't coding, and you have to stop talking to all the other coders who you like chatting with at work. Wtf?
Someone has NO CLUE how coders think. And this made it to the front page of slashdot how, exactly?
Your assumption is that people only buy product. In short, the aim of a creative company is to build up a back catalog of items to sell, where in fact, customers are actually interested in future content. Thus, people will buy copies of Firefly, even after having watched downloaded copies, because they are intent on sending a signal that future content along the lines of Firefly should be produced.
The fact that apple gets to market with a new revision every 18 months probably helps in that one.
The real analog hole that the studios are trying to eliminate is the massive amount of legal content already in people's homes that the studios think is stopping people from buying new content.
Pirates are just a useful scapegoat.
You guys are so isolationist it hurts. You so need to travel outside the US on occasion and find out about the rest of the world. Seriously.
I'm getting questions from some real trailing edgers about why their drm'd cds can't be ripped to their shiny ipods. It breaks me tht i can't give them a legal answer apart from the poor quality itunes tracks. And I dislike that even that one has the only 3 computers restriction that will bite them sooner or later.
No good answer yet. But I am sure the massive demand will draw out supply sooner rather than later.
Why do the big players not get the long tail fact that stopping people from seeing your stuff is suicidal? There is so much other good stuff out there fighting for attention, be it news sites, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, flashfilms, indie films, et bloody cetera.
The money is in editorial branding. And that is because editorial choice is a way of dealing with information overload. It's so freaking obvious, yet none of the majors seem to get it. Even when some english nightclub goes on to form a top selling dance mix brand, just by picking good tunes. This is the way it is done.
Not by making your software even more anti-usable. FFS.
Dude, that is b0rked. Glad you made it through anyways :-)
You know, i kinda wished you hadn't pointed that out. Because I am almost invariably the smartest coder in the room, and yes, I can't hold a job to save my life. And yes, girls run away from me when they figure out just how smart I am.
:-)
Gar. I hate you now.
That saddens me. Why would you not want to help bright kids acheive their full potential? Are you afraid of change? Do you really prefer this current state? Or do you fear that bright kids will bring about the downfall of civilisation?
I am truly at a loss to understand that state of mind. Really.
Don't you see that it's not about being useful for joe average, but as a way for people to feed google pre-digested data feeds that describe their websites. This is a white hat search engine optimisation tool. And the fact that you can upload content using ftp to upload rss files just makes it a walk in the park. Really, too friggen easy.
;-)
The fact that I am thinking about uploading my local job site's content just so that i can actually search it is beside the point, right?
If there is one thing where the iPod beats the living crap out of pdas, it is in the explain the UI in twenty words or less, over loud music, at a house party ease of use. As opposed to the only a geek could love it ui of pdas.
Difference between pitching at the bleeding edge as opposed to the middle of the adoption curve.
With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads? Because they are usually irrelevent, visually overloading, annoying, and frequently pointless.
And with what? Firefox, plus a variety of home brewed hacks.
Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads? No, I stopped watching TV and listening to radio a couple of years ago.
What about in a magazine? Stopped reading them too.
Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many? That, and the magazines got outpaced for relevence and speed to market by blogs.
The military powers are always looking upwards, when in fact a couple of guys in a crowd with a molotov cocktail and a camera crew can still win strategically. You can't beat guerrilla warfare with satelites.
Heh. I suspect you guys are harder hit in the US because of your CxO's tendency to be lemmings, compared to slightly more conservative CxO's out here in Aus.
Sure there is less work than 2000, but there is more work than there was in '95. So, meh. I think you are just being a fatalist.
And stuff will stop moving off shore just as soon as it becomes economically more viable to do it onshore. And that means you can either become cheaper, or more effective. Your choice.
If you can't utilise your intelligence to such a level that justifies why you should be paid so much more than those of us out here in the real world, I really don't see a problem with you failing. Really. Welcome to the real world.
Hint: I'm an Australian, I have both taken outsourced work from the US, and had my job outsourced to india. And, by god, we have been hit with some horrid trade deals thanks to the US of A. Really.
So, the question is, are you going to fight, or are you going to sit there and moan like some wussy girl's blouse?
There is a real difference between being a coder and a worker in a steel mill. In a steel mill, you are completely dependant on the mill owner continuing to decide to keep the mill operational. Mills are expensive pieces of capital equipment.
Whereas, being a coder doesn't take a lot of capital at all. In fact, I have the only real capital asset required on my lap right now...
DO you know which country has lost the most manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years? China. The cause? American automation techniques and technologies.
Manufacturing jobs are taking the same arc that farming jobs took over a hundred years ago with the widespread adoption of farm machinery. The same mass unemployment that actually created the pool of idle labour that fed the industrial revolution.
It's all down to whether the underemployed are going to continue to blame others for their misfortune, and thus not take responsibility for their situation, or if they take responsibility and decide to find something new to do.
Will be interesting to see which is the more prevalent approach.
Change in this case means fewer and lower paying jobs.
Yes, because there is a limited set of work to be done. Uhuh.
No. There is no limit to the amount of software that needs to be written. I can think of five or six desktop apps, about twenty webservices, and a fistful of embedded devices I need/want/desire.
Get out there and start being creative for chrissakes. Stop whinging that the invisible "them" is responsible for your misfortunes. It is all down to you. Anything else is a cop out.
You still want to work in Cobol or VB?
Been there, done that. Watched said company flame out. I'm still working. Embrace change. It's good for you.