TomOfTTB

He has a (semi-)valid point but he distorts it by not understanding what a bubble is.

The problem is his definition, "A bubble occurs when an asset moves up today only because it moved up yesterday", is wrong.

A Bubble is actually when people have unreal expectations of how much stock will move up tomorrow. Or as economists say...

"a widespread cognitive bias that leads market participants to drive stock price above their value in relation to normal valuation standards"

So in the case of "bubble 1.0" the bright future of a few truly valuable companies (Amazon, Google, etc...) led to a cognitive bias in favor of ALL internet companies. Those other companies are what made it a bubble.

So his point about Facebook may be a valid one. It may be like Amazon and Google 15 years from now. That's a complicated question involving how willing people are to re-establish social connections, how likely it is that a competitor will come along that's superior to Facebook and whether social sharing is "a phase" or not.

But Facebook's eventual value does not negate "Bubble 2.0" as it might just be the company that helps create the cognitive bias and not necessarily one that benefits from it.

Hitchens was essentially a Marxist (by his own admission) who was also in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the foreign policy it represented. So there was very little I agreed with him on.

But I'm terribly upset about this and I'll tell you why.

Because of his willingness to debate. I'd literally scan right wing talk radio schedules for his name because you just knew it would be a great show. In a world where so many people in our modern society hide in their little cliques I think a smart person who is willing to have their ideas challenged is the most valuable person of all.

Losing a voice like that is a true tragedy.

So, with all due respect, I hope he is wrong in his beliefs about the after life because if there is a heaven he's surely earned his place in it.

Edit: On that note this is awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JJqXISBiI (though skip the first 4 minutes of the host self aggrandizement)

The one thing I always wonder about these stories is if they are true why haven't we in the United States been surpassed? The first time I remember hearing about Finland's education system was 5th grade yet I'm in my early 30s and Finland hasn't moved up much. They still has a much lower GDP per Capita. I can't remember the last time I heard of a major breakthrough coming out of Finland. Other than Nokia I can't think of any other worldwide companies founded in Finland.

I don't mean to bash Finland which is a truly amazing place (no sarcasm, it really is). But at the same time a big problem in education is the scale tends to get clouded. No Child Left Behind's epic failure is a testament to that. Isn't it at least possible that Finish schools also "teach to the test" especially considering they test their students so rarely?

Before we increase class size, abandon charter schools and slow down efforts to integrate more technology into classrooms in favor of higher teacher salaries I'd like to see much more research done in this area.

I don't think this is practical. So say your friendly neighborhood oil company sends a memo out to its employees saying "We need to drill in the [Insert National Park] to stay in business. So if you want to keep your job you need to send money to politicians that will allow us to drill in [Insert National Park]"

If that statement is true and the company would really go out of business than it isn't coercion. But the end result is the same as you have now.

The same is true for Unions just substitute "You have to elect this person or they'll gut your social security and take away your pension" in place of drilling.

Honestly, if you think something this complex is simple and the people who disagree with you are idiots than it's probably you who is acting like an idiot.

To give just one flaw in your logic. Protesting is speech. If I work I can't protest. But I do get money for my work. If I were to pay someone to protest for me I would be using my money to exercise my right of free speech. So in that case money is speech.

The issue is in money inequality. If I'm paid $1,000 an hour than my money can buy more speech than the person who goes out and protests. If our society values every person's free speech equally then we need to find a way to deal with that inequality.

THAT is the issue and that's a lot more complicated issue.

I hope this type of talk evolves into a discussion about creating apps that can adjust to their environment. That, in my opinion, is what we really need now that all these new connected devices are popping up (Phones, TVs, 7" tablets, 10" tablets, etc...)

Let me try to explain what I mean.

To present a hypothetical assume you have an app with 6 top level functions (aka the functions you want to always be easily accessible). In a multi-platform development environment you'd define those top level functions and rank them by importance. The app would then use the norms of its environment to determine what is appropriate based on those rankings.

So it would...

- Put the 3 most important functions on the bottom of an iPhone screen and put a "More" button as the fourth (since the iPhone's norm is 4 icons at the bottom of the screen)

- Hide the functions on an Android App but then show them when the Menu button is pushed (as in the norm for Android)

- Place the functions in a side bar if the application is in a desktop browser (As is sort of the norm for the web)

I'm not suggesting that rule specifically but hopefully you see my point. Designing an app once and then making rules that adjust it to the optimal state for its environment.

The "given how easy they are to implement I see no reason not to" part is what bugs me the most about this. I don't think there's a modern language in existence that doesn't have at least 3 free ways to implement an RSS/Atom feed. Every framework I can think of (ASP.Net (MVC and Web Forms), Django, Rails) has it built in and it takes virtually no resources.

Unless you use an ad service that doesn't support it I can't see a reason why you wouldn't implement (I can't speak for other languages but in ASP.NET MVC I could implement a feed in the time it took him to make that post)

I'll give you my suggestions based on a mini version of the configuration I've been using for a couple years (except for the dropbox part which I just started using this year). This is only for Windows but most works on Mac and Linux...

1 Windows Server for Authentication, DHCP and DNS. Unless your users will be off campus for extended periods of time (30+ days) you don't need to worry about a VPN (since the local system will authenticate their account disconnected)

Dropbox for Teams on all systems. On Windows systems you can move the Desktop, Pictures, and Documents folders right into the Dropbox folder to sync and backup all files (Box.Net is an option with more features but I had massive problems with it to the tune of 80% of users and the company didn't seem to care)

Faronics DeepFreeze is a program that freezes the system files for Windows systems. By creating a separate partition for files you can freeze the whole system and avoid problems (just create a files partition and move dropbox and the users files to there). You can also set times for unfreezing for updates (I set it for Sunday at 1am and have the auto updates run at the same time). Macs and Linux can ususally take care of themselves on the security front

Patch Management with GFI Languard is cheap and doesn't require a whole infrastructure to work with. For updating software you can used a Powershell script and a shared "Updates" folder in dropbox to distribute MSI files

On E-mail I use Rackspace's hosted exchange because my users were used to an Exchange server. But you could just as easily get by with Google Apps.

AntiVirus I just use Trend Micro's corporate version but it does have a fairly small server footprint. It could easily run on the one Windows server you have.

Hope it helps. Feel free to e-mail if you have questions

> Because they could not? The only way they could was to buy it from HP, and that costs money.

The money saved on software licensing isn't enough to make the difference if these companies were "desperate" for an alternative. As you pointed out HTC is making Windows Mobile handsets right now and it costs money.

(Though again my point on HTC was they'd be pushing WP if they were desperate to get away from Android and they aren't)

> B&N customizes Android by cutting down on features to pare it down to a tablet, the requirements are... lower.

What features has B&N paired down in the Nook? They've restricted the use of some features but they haven't removed anything that I know of. Meaning what they have done is add a shell on top of Android just as any other manufacturer could do.

Even if you buy the argument that it would be harder for Samsung and HTC to adopt webOS feature into a shell you can't argue that it would be harder than switching to an entirely new OS and putting the marketing budget into it to attract development.

If that were easy HP would have done it.

While I agree I really don't see hardware manufacturers adopting webOS. Since webOS is now Open Source it would be much easier for them to adopt the innovations of webOS (particularly interface wise) and use it as a shell on top of Android. That way you get the Android marketplace and the advantages of webOS.

I guess HP could enforce the patents to keep those innovations locked to webOS but it's kind of hard to do that AND promote webOS as an open solution for people to use.

If these companies are "desperate for an alternative" why didn't they embrace webOS before? Or why aren't they pushing Windows Mobile?

Or, if they want open, why not just fork Android like Amazon and Barnes and Noble? Are you seriously suggesting Barnes and Noble has more technical resources than HTC and Samsung?

Well free stacks aren't really free either but we could argue that point until we're blue in the face.

The issue with Microsoft right now is they seem to want to throw away everything they've created over the last decade and embrace the web in a desperate attempt to bring new developers in.

For example, if you watch the Build sessions you see a lot of focus on C++ where as Microsoft used to treat C# like it's preferred language. That's got a lot of people thinking Microsoft's looking to sideline C# in the same way they did VB 10 years ago.

Visual Basic was obviously more popular that C# at that time (being C# hadn't existed before that). So the Tiobe index doesn't mean much (and honestly I'm always dubious of Tiobe in that I don't think PHP is more popular than Ruby and Python combined in modern development)

3 years ago Microsoft was telling developers to use ASP.NET Web Forms, WPF, and Silverlight. Today all that is essentially looked on as bad practice. So yes, there are people in the MS Developer community who are nervous.

This is a good thing for Microsoft.

Microsoft needs to become more outwardly focused and influential softies leaving the fold and pushing from the outside will do that. Right now the two good things Microsoft has going for it is MVC and C#. Both of which were inspired or heavily influenced by outside forces (MVC by Castle and C# 4 was influenced heavily by Python).

Phil Haack moving to Github will hopefully push Microsoft to embrace open collaboration systems a little better and because he's outside of Microsoft he won't have to deal with "you might kill off VS Team Foundation" hindrances.

All this in turn MIGHT give Microsoft a chance at becoming relevant again in the developer space (and please don't say "a lot of people use Microsoft" because I'm one of those people and I know a lot of those people and they're all looking at their future with worried eyes)

I agree the unemployment number is messed up but for different reasons. His logic doesn't track for me.

Babies who were just born aren't entering the job force. As disturbing as it is to contemplate we have no idea how many of those babies will and won't make it to working age.

Putting that creepy thought aside you'd still want to look at population growth from 1993 (assuming 18 as the age people enter the job market though often times that's not even true because of higher education delay).

In that case you're looking at an average population growth of 229,299 per month in 1993 to his death rate of 216,000. Add the 120,000 jobs on top of that and you actually get a net gain.

Of course that doesn't count part time workers, discouraged workers, and all the other factors that really do make the unemployment rate bull. I'm just saying his logic isn't consistent.

I'm not saying it's not a good thing. But it's an equally good thing if a Mexican family pulls_themselves_and_their_families_out_of_extreme_poverty. If you thought through my point rather than just emoting you would have realized that.

Yes but the western world itself is less than a third of the world's population and no one would argue against it having the majority of so-called "dynamic" people. Without knowing how many people we're talking about (and neither of us do) you can't argue percentage of the population as a reason.

The one point I'd agree with though is this: there are probably tons of third world people who are just as entrepreneurial as people in the U.S. but who don't have the resources to do anything more than start a coke stand. But in terms of dynamic people who have the resources to start a company I still think the U.S. is in the lead

Actually there's plenty of evidence to say entrepreneurship could be partially hereditary (or more to the point a genetic disposition to be intelligent and a genetic makeup that allows you to deal with stress through low blood pressure, a chemical makeup that gives you a calm disposition, and so on)

So do you have another point or do you just specialize in attacks?

I just defined the problem I didn't put forth a solution. But your indignation shows exactly why the problem is so significant.

Having said that I'm not saying it isn't the way to save America either. The problem right now is while Chinese adults are making low wages they're managing to put away enough money to send their kids to University. Which in turn is causing Universities to spring up in China. If those graduates stay in China they'll innovate there and almost inevitably steal some of the high level work done by Americans (such as technology design and engineering). Then we start to lose those jobs and the wealth starts flowing into Asia.

So the question is: Isn't it better for the U.S. to have the Mexican adult pay for his child to go to a U.S. University and innovate here?

But Foxconn wouldn't have to pay all the fees and middle men involved with getting products from China to here. So they could afford to pay more because their product would need nothing more than a truck.

>> the idea that all the most innovative people only exist in the United States (or even that people in the US are on average more innovative than others) is ridiculous, and stating it is just blind nationalism...

You couldn't be more wrong.

First, no one ever said "all" the dynamic people were in the US. The implied point was that the majority of them are. I believe that to be true for some very obvious, logical reasons.

The U.S. benefits from some unintended social and genetic engineering because of a few factors...

1. The U.S. has no ethnic culture (since Europeans supplanted the native population and then opened the doors to the rest of the world rather than embracing an "only European" ideal). So innovative people could more easily immigrate here provided there were advantages to doing so (which there were as I'll outline below). I'm not saying that couldn't happen elsewhere but a Frenchman who lives in England is still considered a Frenchman. A Frenchman who lives in America is considered an American and that inclusion makes people more likely to come here.

2. From our founding to the early 1900s the U.S. was far and away ahead of the world in recognizing and rewarding entrepreneurship. We didn't have an entrenched royalty or class system and democracy made sure laws benefited the populace in general rather than a ruling elite. This drew entrepreneurs to the U.S. and their descendants are likely still here (and in many cases inherited that dynamism either by nature or nurture)

3. From WWII to around the mid-1980s the U.S. was far and away wealthier than the rest of the world because WWII caused decades of damage to the European and Asian economies. Remember with the exception of a handful of planes attacking the West Coast there was no fighting done in the U.S. whatsoever. That means no reconstruction needed while the rest of the world was devastated. So again entrepreneurs (who are drawn to where the wealth is) came to the U.S.

4. The U.S. has a culture built around the idea that you can come here with nothing and become rich. That influences a lot of our laws and customs. For example, there's a reason why our tax rates are lower than a large portion of the world. So even today, when the advantages to starting a company in the U.S. are smaller than they've ever been, the U.S. tends to draw entrepreneurs to it.

So in the end it isn't nationalism it's just common sense.

I think you’re projecting what you want the problem to be on top of what the problem actually is (apologies in advance for the tl;dr factor below)

The economic crisis of the last couple years is not America’s problem. America’s problem is we became very successful a few decades ago and got very rich because of it. That wealth led us to create more and more jobs that “serviced” us. So our economy became service oriented while poor countries (primarily in Asia) were happy to take our manufacturing jobs.

As the article says “Designed by Apple in California, Manufactured in China”

The U.S. still leads in designing things but almost everything we design is manufactured elsewhere and the people in those other countries are putting together just enough wealth to send their kids to college. Meaning eventually we’ll start to see more design work out of Asia at which point we’re going to start losing a lot of our wealth and we’ll be left with a service economy that no longer has enough wealth to support itself.

Fixing this problem means competing on every level with countries like China. But we can’t do that because we don’t want to be like China. Foxconn could open a factory in Texas tomorrow and get enough Mexicans to staff it by the end of the week but our laws won’t allow them to pay the low wages they pay in China. These laws are based on a good instinct on our part but it’s an instinct born out of Arrogance.

“We are Americans so we can dictate what something is worth even if someone else is willing to manufacture it for less”

But the problem is we can’t dictate what something is worth. So China, who is willing to allow their people to be treated far more ruthlessly, always wins out. Until we come to terms with that and find some way to fix it we’ll still have a problem

(For the record I think automation through robotics might be the key to fixing this to a certain extent but that’s a whole different conversation)

I have no criticisms for sink.js my comment was more on the philosophical side. The danger in a solution like sink.js is it becomes "good enough" until people need more than it can provide. Then they turn to the APIs and end up dealing with fragmentation.

If you think about it that's exactly what happened with IE circa Version 5. The one good thing IE did was make it possible to develop for one browser. What the industry should have done then was what they're doing with HTML5 now. Define a standard so other competitors could enter the market without creating fragmentation. But that's not what happened and now everyone has to write for 3 browsers (if not more thanks to IE7,8,and 9)

Same with sink.js. For all the bad in Flash almost everyone has it and it's a consistent thing you can write to. If people use sink.js now and don't pay attention to the fragmented APIs underneath we'll end up having to write to 3 different APIs down the line.

So again I'm not against sink.js. I'm just saying people using it need to realize exactly what you said and pressure browsers for a common API in the long run.

It occurs to me we're starting to go around in circles. The author suggests...

"To make it work in both Chrome and Firefox, we had to use sink.js, to abstract the differences between the audio APIs."

But isn't that exactly what Flash is? Yes sink.js would be an open solution but it would be an open solution based on proprietary APIs built into the browser (which themselves are open source but which can't be changed without approval of their governing bodies making them not that much different than Flash and its product teams)

So really we've traded Flash's native audio processing for a JavaScript solution using a Web API which in turn uses native APIs.

It seems like it would be more productive to force the browsers to develop one common API

I don't disagree but I think the larger point here is Government is painfully ineffective at meddling. So much so that they end up making the problem they were trying to prevent worse.

I mean, this was a pretty obvious work around for McDonalds. If the SF City Council was serious about this they should have seen it coming from a mile away.

The last numbers I know of are from 2003 but in 2003 Happy Meals accounted for about 20% of McDonalds Sales (Link found through Quick Google Search: http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2004/09/03/the-steal...)

Apparently they distributed over 1.5 Billion toys in 2009 (Lftqgs: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1460556/mcdonalds_g...)

So I'd say yes

Here's my explanation from experience...

99% of writing code is basic stuff that anyone out of school can do.

(Yes I made 99% up out of thin air but in my experience it's reasonably accurate)

In the world there are a lot of programmers that can do 99% of the work fine but who freeze at a problem. This isn't meant as a criticism. These people are good workers, good citizens, and so on. But in my experience they are the type of people who got a CS degree because they heard "it was the future" and are happy with a 9 to 5 job where they don't have to think about technology or code past 5:01 PM

When you supervise coding in a corporate environment you generally have 1 or 2 stars and then a bunch of other guys who fit the above description. You don't want your stars constantly being distracted by the others when they hit a problem so you seek out tools with support contracts. Then when someone hits a problem they file a support request and move on to something else until they get a response.

When support solves the problem those guys go back to coding the 99% of the stuff that they can do and everyone's happy for a fraction of the price.

$399 a year is cheap when it allows you to hire programmers who are competent but not stars (and who are accordingly cheaper)

I understand that but I think the inferred point was "drop DRM and people will buy from multiple sources" which I don't think is true. My point is people don't want to use multiple services. If Amazon makes it easy to purchase books people will stay with Amazon regardless of DRM.

I'll give you an example. I was tempted to buy books from Apress today (they have a all e-books are $15 special). But I weighed the pros and cons and decided to buy them from Amazon instead for an average of $7 more per book because I like having books in my Kindle library that are automatically accessible.

So DRM is irrelevant but it isn't the main deterrent.

I really don't think history bears this out. The lesson of Apple seems to be people will accept DRM if you make it easy for them to buy. There were plenty of places to buy DRM-free music (including Amazon) yet people still went to iTunes because of its ease of use.

Of course Apple later proved DRM doesn't matter and people will pay for a DRM-free product if it's easy to purchase. But that's an entirely different point. As far as I can see the historical precedent is that DRM isn't enough of a deterrent for most people.

There are a few major flaws in this measure. The first and most obvious is it doesn't take into account income. Clinton, for example, had a massive amount of tax revenue to play with so he could have spent more and still have increased the debt less.

The second issue is it doesn't take congress into account. Particularly the House whose Constitutional jobs is to control the purse strings. By that measure George W. Bush and Barack Obama come off quite a bit worse since both had clear majorities (I know that wasn't the case for any President since Reagan but my knowledge of congressional majorities is non-existent before that)

Finally there's the spill over effect. Reagan and Obama both walked into pretty big messes and the government always spends more in a financial downturn than it does in an upturn.

I don't think that's true. I think the innovation of the iPhone was in two areas...

1. It was the first product to popularize touch. That's going to have a big impact in the future of technology. The gestures pioneered by the iPhone (swipe, pinch to zoom) could very well exist 100 years from now and if they do the iPhone will be their ancestor. That's a big deal.

2. The iPhone saved Apple and Apple changed the conversation in technology. 10 years ago adding more features and giving users 20 different ways to do things was considered an asset. Now the technology industry has changed direction back towards designing a product and giving the user 1 way to do things that's easier. I'm inclined to believe we'll eventually reach a happy medium between those two philosophies but there's no doubt the design side was losing out before Apple's resurgence.