tom_rath

10 ms·

31.
by tom_rath 17y ago
So, nothing then? Of all the plans to 'change the world', that's the worst I've heard. Kindly stay out of the way whilst the rest of us continue trying to improve things.
32.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Good for you, Sparky. Now, what are you going to do about it out here in the Real World?
33.
by tom_rath 17y ago
...and how's that working out for ya, Bruce Lee? Many, many generations have come before you with exactly the same idea, and all struck out (most notably the "boomers", who went a long way towards giving us the environment we're facing now)
34.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Hardly! I'm saying "we're not strangers to what you're experiencing, but your conclusions are incorrect". You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do
35.
by tom_rath 17y ago
It looks like somebody should ask Santa for a thicker skin next Christmas. The advice I read here was of the tone: "Hey, we were once where you are now. Take it from us: It gets better, but your current mindset is set for failure." The a
36.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Not really. If one throws an hojillion low-quality posts up in a day, a few of those will be ranked +1. That grants frequent posters a ludicrously high karma score for what amounts to little overall contribution to the 'community'. In a wa
37.
by tom_rath 17y ago
From what I've seen (and felt!) one might be facing a really nasty bug which has caused a sudden crash in a production environment which is holding up many hundreds of very angry customers. Some yelling may have occurred. You know you shou
38.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Folks often remark to me that they'd never want to run a business themselves because it would take up all their time. To that I'll reply "Yup, 'Freedom is Slavery'." I find it disturbing how few catch that reference, but self-direction isn
39.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Yes, this one cheeses me off to no end. If the problem is pursued as described to keep the plane stationary on the treadmill (with the treadmill blazing so fast that the bearings in the plane's wheels eventually melt from friction), the pla
40.
by tom_rath 17y ago
I've no idea why I'm receiving downvotes either. I guess a few folks are angry about having their business model attacked with reality. Addressing your post: Software isn't a car and the marginal cost to manufacture more software licenses
41.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Joel Spolsky summed it up pretty well in his last Inc. article: "...The Web consulting business was great, but it had one problem: limited margins. You could charge only so much for an hour of some consultant's time -- in those days, maybe
42.
by tom_rath 17y ago
No, I'm speaking to those who are worried about their commercial software not being able to compete with 'free' alternatives. That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn, so it's easy to out-compete those folk
43.
by tom_rath 17y ago
...and that, dear readers, is why commercial software can compete against free, open source alternatives.
44.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Long-term piracy concerns aside, the author can take that listing on NowTorrents with a pinch of salt. If you try entering any garbage text in the 'search' you'll see auto-generated results (soon to be search-engine indexed) which claim to
45.
by tom_rath 17y ago
I didn't twist your words and I'm not talking about corporate spin-offs. To be picky, your exact quote was "Apollo led to hundreds (if not thousands) of advances". It did not. There were no breakthroughs in basic science, fundamental idea
46.
by tom_rath 17y ago
So, down from 'thousands of spin-offs' to 13, all of which would have been developed on their own for the explicit purpose to which they were eventually put. None required the magic of putting a human on the Moon for their development and
47.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Like Earth, the resources on Mars are at the bottom of a gravity well and lack the benefit of Earth's breathable atmosphere, massive infrastructure and ~7 Billion inhabitants. What, exactly, would you profit from by owning 250 miles of tha
48.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Can you name a dozen of those hundreds (if not thousands) of advances? If you can, try to identify those which wouldn't have happened without Apollo. The harsh truth is there aren't any. We've tried the 'get something great as a result of
49.
by tom_rath 17y ago
The question is, is a human Mars mission worth doing? Wouldn't a series of missions building an infrastructure to use metal and water-rich asteroids do more to establish a permanent human presence in space? Given a fixed amount of time and
50.
by tom_rath 17y ago
>I don't know where you got the idea that I believed that wealth is fixed and that we need central planning to work I'd say the statement "Jobs are not created, only reallocated." did that. Whatever your beliefs and intended context, y
51.
by tom_rath 17y ago
What is there to left understand in Kiba's statement? It's nonsense and I'm surprised it's been up-voted as much as it has. Jobs are created by wealth. They are not a constant bestowed through the universe by fate. We don't live in a worl
52.
by tom_rath 17y ago
"Jobs are not created"?!? What nonsense! There were ~1.7 Billion people on the planet in 1900. Are there only ~1.7 Billion jobs to go around for the ~6-7 Billion people on the planet today? Wealth is created from industry, which creates j
53.
by tom_rath 17y ago
So, a teen points out that many sign up to Twitter but few bother to use the service after the initial novelty wears off. That reminds me of another fabled kid who pointed out that the emperor was walking around stark naked.
54.
by tom_rath 17y ago
...and yet, populated with hordes of non-techies, Google still hasn't been able to move YouTube from substantial loss to minimal profit (even when the world was in the middle of a "Web 2.0" tech boom!). Now that we're in a bust, what does t
55.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Until GOOG approaches MSFT's revenues, I don't think Microsoft will worry. If there's a 'war' between those two companies, Microsoft is probably handling it as one of attrition. Google has one strong source of revenue (search advertising)
56.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Actually, the more you use Google's free services the more you cost them. It's the non-techies who are clicking their ads which are making money for Google so, for all their technical marvels, Google's revenue source(s) are pretty narrowly
57.
Facing cash-flow issues in a start-up(blog.penelopetrunk.com)
4 points by tom_rath 17y ago|0 comments
58.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Probably not what you have in mind, but The Wealthy Barber ( http://www.wealthybarber.com/ ) provides common-sense advice for accumulating and managing modest wealth without needing corporate success.
59.
by tom_rath 17y ago
If you've not seen any evidence that sacrificing health for work is a losing strategy, you haven't looked hard enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi
60.
by tom_rath 17y ago
Wow, this is horribly bad advice and the examples provided to bolster it appear disingenuous. Sure, Mark Cuban lived on bar food and crashed on a single couch in an apartment shared with a number of other guys, but that was before he'd even

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