rphlx

56 ms·

241.
by rphlx 15y ago
The creation of cash is hardly decentralized.
242.
by rphlx 15y ago
The great thing about humans in groups - once you are charming enough to sell the right 10-20% of a population on your own, with luck, other people will soon start to copy them, and pretty soon you are the Catholic church, or Facebook, or A
243.
by rphlx 15y ago
It is if you don't want a potential competitor, potential acquirer, or just a large amoral corporation, to have an informational advantage over you.
244.
by rphlx 15y ago
Not really. This collision required specific intent, and a great deal of compute power, to find. md5 is still adequate for accidental/random error detection because the universe doesn't (usually) spend many hundreds of hours on hundreds of
245.
by rphlx 15y ago
In the end I think much of the power lies with the studios, as they have more capital, and are closer to the customer. Blockbusters can easily create stars, but stars usually cannot - without major studio backing - create blockbusters.
246.
by rphlx 15y ago
My point is that Apple stock seems priced based on revenue and growth expectations which are probably unrealistic in the long term. The fact that you can find other tech companies with a higher P/E doesn't prove or disprove that either way.
247.
by rphlx 15y ago
P/E can be argued both ways - Exxon has a P/E of 10.43, and over a 5-10 year timeframe, Apple probably has a riskier income stream than they do. AAPL's rev is highly dependent on 2-3 trendy, high-growth, high-margin HW products, competing i
248.
by rphlx 15y ago
A giant cash pile earning 2% a year is not compelling for investors. AAPL has very high growth expectations priced into the stock which they somehow need to continue to meet.
249.
by rphlx 15y ago
Or unless you can charge them more every cycle. That seems very challenging as Chinese and Indian consumers become a larger fraction of their revenue, and as Android puts constant pressure on their smartphone business.
250.
by rphlx 15y ago
I would bet against that saving the day. iTunes and the app store bring in maybe 5 billion a year? Even at 100%/yr growth, that's not enough to smooth even a minor bump in their HW revenue. It's pocket change.
251.
by rphlx 15y ago
There are only 7 billion people on Earth. Apple is essentially making $0.14 in profit per human, per week. Of course, it's a much smaller number of very rich humans, probably less than 1 billion, actually buying their products. There is a l
252.
by rphlx 15y ago
Radio is a communications technology. Hollywood is a consortium of large, rich entertainment companies which are capable of adopting and adapting to new communications technologies, usually reluctantly, but eventually successfully. They wil
253.
by rphlx 15y ago
Per rent dollar, some parts of LA like the UCLA area, South Pas, Santa Monica, Malibu, etc, seem much nicer than SF. The poor/middle-class parts of LA like the SFV are obviously in bad shape.
254.
by rphlx 15y ago
The insurance company inherently pools everyone that it insures, whether they work in 10 large companies, or 1000 small ones. So I fail to see a legit statistical/risk-model reason why health insurers MUST gouge small companies/entrepreneur
255.
by rphlx 15y ago
Today you can buy a Pizza 2011 that is twice the cost of a Pizza 2000!
256.
by rphlx 15y ago
It's more like a thermonuclear war for the cell phone and tablet market :)
257.
by rphlx 15y ago
As a technical founder - it's equally difficult to find a good sales/marketing guy. How are you supposed to interview them? Take four to a bar and compare how many friends they make?
258.
by rphlx 15y ago
Not really. Variety is a good thing and nerdy, advanced users often prefer nerdy, advanced products. I would hate to live in a world with just the iPhone and no Android.
259.
by rphlx 15y ago
Hopefully the Built-In Test pin doesn't trigger a nuclear event.
260.
by rphlx 15y ago
Titles are bullshit. At some companies almost every salesperson is a VP of Sales, Western Antarctica (or whatever) -- it's a free way to make customers feel important.
261.
by rphlx 15y ago
It's upvoted because, after people post a comment utterly destroying it, they want their comment's unique wisdom and intelligence to be visible to others. Even (maybe, especially) when the original article is garbage. It's a perverse incent
262.
by rphlx 15y ago
Almost all of the difficult underlying technologies in Apple products were created 10-50 years earlier by other companies and government agencies such as Intel, Xerox, NASA, Qualcomm, the US DoD, etc. They are basically the world's most fam
263.
by rphlx 15y ago
When you're mostly creating a better case, better UX, and better marketing.. and your partners do most of the really hard low-level technical stuff [1].. why bother with R&D? Your whole image is based on non-engineer-driven products. [1
264.
by rphlx 15y ago
Look, it's an incremental update to a phone. Will it be loved by millions? Probably. But, seriously, it's just a phone. I guess I don't get it.
265.
by rphlx 15y ago
I remember using Lloyd radio in early 1999 and thinking, "WTF, why doesn't this just stream mp3s?". At that point, he was still 1 year behind being 2 years ahead of the times.
266.
by rphlx 15y ago
I am truly boggled that Wave contained 1M lines of code given the functionality.. No wonder it was hard to make it good.. Feels like two high-end devs could implement the 80% of it that people actually used in a couple weeks and 10-50k LOC.
267.
by rphlx 15y ago
Computers, MP3 players, and smartphones would still exist without Steve Jobs. Although probably with a cheaper/uglier case, more complicated SW, and less marketing and design-induced love.
268.
by rphlx 15y ago
I think RMS is stuck in the classic Aspie hell of having strong, logically consistent beliefs that he can't communicate in a way that is emotionally sensitive enough to persuade Normals. I don't think he enjoys this or does it on purpose; I
269.
by rphlx 15y ago
I think it's a form of grieving. Not much point in wasting mental energy opposing it.
270.
by rphlx 15y ago
I think giving virtually all of the credit, wealth and social standing to the "visionary" is a massive error which shafts a lot of people, who are even more rare, unique and talented than Steve Jobs. He deserves a lot of credit to be sure,

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