d4ft

Hi Daniel-

I guess what my argument comes down to is this: if I were an indie director, given the choice, I would prefer to get my movies seen by more people, and make less money (at least in the beginning), than set a price and make people pay, which will inevitably decrease viewings. I think the best way to accomplish the former, would be to put it on youtube and promote it. Yes, casual browsers would be lost. But, with the pay-per-view model, we are not getting too many casual browsers anyway, since they have to pay. So, perhaps the best way to do such a thing would be to have a youtube for indie movies and just let them be free.

Further, I also see problems with the distribution model. If we store these movies in the cloud, you need internet to watch them. That kind of sucks. If you store them locally, they take up a ton of space. That also sucks. If we can delete them after we watch and then download them later, that still necessitates an internet connection, and kind of sucks anyway.

As a final note, I guess I haven't convinced myself either way, so thanks for playing along.

So, I'll play the devils advocate. What exactly is the value proposition here? Are there people scouring the internet for certain indie movies? I like indie movies, and I like the idea of rewarding the people who are behind them, but it is hard for me to imagine what an itunes for indie movies with a marketing spin (is that what we are talking about here?) is really going to accomplish. I have netflix. I can get a lot of movies from there, for cheap. (including many of the more famous indie films). I also have HBO, more cheap movies. Granted, they aren't indie movies, but I can't see my self spending extra money for movies by people I don't know and have heard nothing about. Maybe I just don't get it. So, I guess, could you explain a little more about what the niche you're filling is?

After all the talk about what hacker news really is, I hesitated to post this. But, I really enjoyed the article so I figured that's at least one hacker who thinks this is interesting news, and maybe one is enough. So enjoy, or not!

In the US, it depends on the jurisdiction.

See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance

Admittedly, I have not read this book. However, from the synopsis, there is a lot left unspoken. While it is true that pure CAPM and ECMH has basically been written off, many economists still believe it is more than "loose fill". The basic formula remains the same but needs to be improved with a more robust set of risk factors, a more siginificant nod to behavioral analysis, and a more coherent way to do both. Nonetheless, I certainly don't agree with the contention that EMH is dead. Instead, I would contend that is an unfinished block of clay waiting for details to turn it into a workable model.

For a more modern take, see Andrew Lo's Adaptive Market Hypothesis.

I'm sure this will be the victim of takedown request shortly, so enjoy it while you can!

Funny you mention that. When I first read the ad, I couldn't help but feel like this was some kind of reincarnation of the spending during the dotcom boom around 2000.

Wow, just wow. Talk about slanted reporting. First, let me just quote one line from the video. "When it comes to any kind of financial scam, like sub-prime mortgages..." Uh, what? Sub-prime mortgages aren't a scam at all. Were they risky? Yes. Were they a scam or illegal? No. Were they securitized in a manner that distorted their value? Maybe. That has nothing to do with the underlying mortgage itself, and really is more reliant on interactions between banks, credit rating agencies, and shadow bank counterparties. This video loses all credibility to me at that point. The cap and trade is not a financial "scam." Yes, there are incentives that are given out to get people to sign on to the system. Yes, the incentives suck. Yes, it would be great if there would be a better way to get all countries to sign on. A carbon tax is one option, but there too we will need to add a ridiculous list of compromises to get countries like china or india to sign on. In absence of a better alternative, the cap and trade is a start. Details will need to be worked out, and some incentives may fall by the way side. The important thing however, is to do SOMETHING, and it is my opinion that this is the best option available at this time.

Yes but if you read carefully, instead of just "look"ing, you would see that 1) I am a student with a semester left and therefore don't need a job and 2) I am soliciting offers to work with someone on solving this problem i.e. creating a solution. I am NOT asking for hints on job searches or tips on how to create a "creative" resume. Sorry if this sounds condescending, but it is frustrating when people don't read the post and respond to some other issue altogether.

I disagree. Outside of similar incentive alignments (agents and recruiters get paid more if you get paid more), the two are worlds apart. An agent is often much more than just someone who shops around a resume looking for the best deal. Agents are often responsible for everything from transportation to financial management to legal advice. These are two VERY different jobs imo, especially when considering, as stated above, that recruiters almost never act as your advocate after the initial interview process has begun and may even give misleading information to try to close a deal.

I agree that recruiters do actually find good placements. Like I said, I don't want to cut recruiting out of the picture, but instead, make it more palatable. I think you are arguing the ends justify the means, and I think that's fine, but I really believe there must be a better way to achieve the same ends with less annoying means.

Awaiting the.. "and I have some great opportunities that you might be interested in". Case and point imo.

Again, I'm not sure what this last paragraph is about, and to be honest, seems like it doesn't relate to the topic at all. Also, the last sentence is missing a word.

I don't get it. I'm not looking for a job here, just voicing my distress at the recruiting industry.

What if there was no status per se or what if status was based on "tests" of some sort and independent of pricing?

fnid-

I think you hit the nail on the head. As far as profitability for the site itself, taking some cut of the actual payments seems reasonable, no?

Misleads who exactly? There are many things to which we ascribe ratios that have nothing to do with time. For instance, people say poker is 80% skill and 20% luck (more for tournament poker, less for limit ring games). Does that mean we should spend 20% of our time rubbing rabbit's feet? Not to anyone who has spent anytime playing poker.

I have been involved in sports at a fairly high level, and to assume that 90% of athletes (or other professionals) apportion time based based on non-concrete goals is, frankly, naive. First a non sport related example: Let's assume we have a Rails programmer who really wants to gain experience with Scala. I would contend there about 0% chance he sits down and says I want to spend 30% of my time learning Scala and then starts reading books. A more realistic scenario would likely revolve around picking a project and spending time completing that project, a concrete goal. The same holds true for a professional baseball player. When he goes out and takes hitting practice, it is not just to hit better, it is to improve his swing motion or change his mechanics, or mess with his footwork, all concrete goals. Yes, he wants to improve his swing, but there is no way he goes out there and says I want to spend 30% of my time improving my swing, he thinks, today I will work on my stance and tomorrow I will work on my grip etc. Sorry if this is belaboring the point, but I think it nonsensical to assume that high-level professionals anywhere do this kind of rationing.

That's not say that we should do away with non-concrete goals altogether. They are important drivers and having some indefinite goal for the future is a good mechanism to drive us to do the smaller things. That said, it is my experience that we partition time for concrete things (heavy bag work, jump rope, complete newest incarnation of website frontend, practice mozart on piano, etc etc.) more efficiently, and most importantly way more often.

I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about this guy a little in Outliers and attributes much of his personality to his upbringing. One might query whether by virtue of being that intelligent, one is already predisposed to isolation and intellectual elitism, but perhaps in this case it is neither here nor there. I have always found (and believe mostly) that brilliant people can describe their ideas (at least generally) in ways us normal knuckle draggers can understand. I would be interested in a capsule summary of CTMU for the common man. However, this intellectual ego-stroking in the videos etc. makes me think Mr. Langan would never so corrupt his lofty ideas.

This guy writes a weekly-ish advice column for Salon. I'm not usually an advice column reader (nor a salon one), but the dude has a way with words and interesting perspective (ex-rocker alcoholic turned writer recovering addict)

I think there are a lot of revenue streams available both provider and student side. I think the most viable is to have a counselor list their normal price, gross it up say 10% and take 15% of the proceeds of the transaction. That way the provider gets most of what s/he wants and the student pays a little more for the added convenience.

I tried a separate post of this but didnt get much response. So round two:

In short, more and more people are going to college which makes getting into "top" colleges harder. I know there has been a lot of discussion as to the worth of the college degree these days, but regardless, I think the overwhelming majority of people still believe you should go to the best (highest ranked? best fit? whatever) college you can. The site hopes to "level the playing field" by connecting students with private college counselors at various price points in various locations. Ideally, I would like to include calendaring, planning, and video conference/recording functionality.

Anyway, here's the presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/secret/ATXWVjJNHk89Le