asr

Take his summation: "iOS isn’t and never was an open computer system. It’s a closed, controlled console system..." The implication being that iOS users have no right to complain because they signed up for a "closed" system.

Systems are never just "open" or "closed." Apple's move here is making the system more closed.

It's surprising to me to think it might be common, because my gut reaction is that this means the founders don't actually have a viable product, but because they got funded before they could figure that out, it will now take months or years for the founders to move on (or pivot significantly). I'd love to hear why that's not what's going on, though.

I was a big fan of Toggl when I was being billed out by the hour... I never needed to share the data but they claim it's very easy to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_style#Similarit...

Did you watch The Social Network? Did you like it? I think we all knew how it ended, it was the writing, cinematography, etc. that account for its popularity. And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh :)

The problem with looking at negative median returns since 1999 is that from 1999-2002 this is just picking up the bubble, and as you point out many funds from vintage years 2003-present are very much still in business, so a current negative return for these vintages is not particularly meaningful. Unless the authors have some methodology I'm not aware of to deal with the fact that venture funds often don't carry companies at anywhere close to their current value.

Finally, even if (B) were true, there's a huge difference between "Most venture funds lose money" and "Most venture funds currently open have lost money." While the first would make me worry about the business model, the second wouldn't.

The article is based off of the "Cambridge Associates LLC U.S. Venture Capital Index." I see no reason to believe that measures the median venture fund--that would be a dumb way to construct an index--the responsible way to create an index is to weight by the size of the fund.

Second, as noted by dgabriel, the story draws its conclusion from the 10-year return--if you look at the quarterly returns on page 6 of the report (http://www.cambridgeassociates.com/pdf/Venture%20Capital%20I...) you'll see the real story is "Venture Firms Lose Money from 2000-2002." Which everyone already knows.

Really, really terrible work.

Am I missing this somewhere earlier?

But manufacturers appear to have dealt with this by getting rid of "baited hooks"--every number on a card is under a surface that has to be scratched off.

I guess they lose the allure of letting people say "I want to buy a card with lots of 7s because that's my lucky number" but it's a simple and effective fix. Oh well, guess I'll have to get rich through hard work :)

Also, since Amazon sells 100% of the Kindle books its readers buy, but only some of the physical books its readers buy, I think this most interesting part of this release is what it says about how great a business move the Kindle was for Amazon. Every time a customer switches to the Kindle they instantly gain a lot of sales that used to happen at various physical bookstores. And that's before even considering that people who walk around with a bookstore 1 foot from them will buy more books, too.

And I think the answer is no, although it's arguable. There is surely a point at which MC will try to do the "right" thing instead of the profitable thing, and it's easy to see how that point is between cutting off Wikileaks (which arguably is harming US national interests) and changing business strategy to appease hackers.

Maybe some central licensing organization that would license patents for free as long as the licensees agreed to some GNU-like terms... or is this not an issue in patent law?

Not only does the technology have to become better in the aggregate than humans, it has to become so much better there's aren't any crash situations where human drivers perform better. There also can't be many crash situations when the computer doesn't significantly outperform a human. Otherwise both public sentiment against the cars, and legal liability will be too great.

Imagine: whenever there's a software bug and an automated car crashes in any situation where a human might not have, the GoogleCar manufacturer will get sued, the local paper will write an article about how Google killed someone, etc. And then, once a year, there will be another story about how crashes are down 2%... that's a lot of lives saved, but which article do you think will get more attention? And do you think "our cars usually make driving safer, just not the night of October 10th when John was killed" will be a winning defense?

I can't wait for this technology, I think it really will deliver all the benefits the article mentions long-term. But it's a long way off (I hope I'm wrong). I give a lot of credit to Google for investing in it now--this is one of the things I read and think "don't be evil" is more than just marketing-speak.

Why do I know that off the top of my head? Civ IV... who says games can't be educational?

In that case, the argument is that acting as if the thing were present will encourage it. I think, although you may disagree, that the same argument applies here--act like the world is just, and act in a just manner yourself, and you may make the world a more just place. (Or is that naive?)