kevinelliott

"There is no way in hell I am paying frontlist pricing for the work of a dead author whose works can be had for about a buck in used paperback."

Well said and good point.

I know that many publishers are justifying that they are charging near dead-tree version pricing because of "costs associated with conversion to eBook formats." That's a sham, because 99% of the eBooks out there do not even have formatting as nice as the printed books, nor do they have the photos or imagery associated with chapters. At least, the Amazon and Apple eBooks. I have seen some PDF eBooks from notable publishers (O'Reilly and Pragmatic) who format their eBooks quite nicely.

If publishers can make their eBooks look nearly as fantastic as their dead-tree versions (if not better), then I think it's fair to charge near dead-tree pricing. Otherwise, who are they fooling? Most of them are doing a "print to PDF" not actually formatting it.

While it's really cute and kids are quite capable, you are taking chances in the legal realm by hiring them. In many areas, children require work permits, and sometimes the minimum age is 15. Otherwise, it's often illegal if you don't go into contract with their parents first. It all depends on where you are in the world.

Perhaps. YC has a history with TC, so I think it bothers fans of these guys as well. After all, it was posted here, and then up voted. And Calacanis is a contributing member here.

None the less, I agree that my comment added nothing of value to the conversation, and that along merits the down votes. But ultimately so did the original article.

You can still be a geek and destroy the data in your photos. These funky photo apps give people who might ordinarily terrible at taking photos and gives them an edge. It's like a golf handicap. It adds a bit of flair and artisticness to what would otherwise potentially be some nasty looking photos of your friend's friends.

When I talk to Android users about my preference for building for the iOS store, they chastise me. When I talk to other developers, they're generally in agreeance with me (with some exceptions, namely purely hacker types not looking to make real profit who are more hobby oriented). Unless your revenue model is ad driven or complementary to another product, it is very hard to make a reasonable living on the Android Market. Users looking for an "open" experience are expecting free/cheap apps, and are willing to use less perfect free/cheap apps over your perfected "expensive" one. Fragmentation (which certainly exists, even on the App Store) simply exaggerates this problem.

If Android is so great, why has every single handset that I've used, including the one I own, drag and stutter when I slide my finger on various screens?

iOS is flawless in this way. There are apps that don't tune their views on both platforms, but only on Android do I consistently see this drag in the OS itself.

Nice. Down modded for pointing out the truth. Seems there are some folks here in denial about Apple's ability to handle the entire workflow and design/manufacturing process.

You don't need to be an Apple fanboy to see that Apple has got a better thing going, even if they do lose market share.

I never said I wanted to be in the handset business.

And frankly, there's not much money to be made in making Android apps. Android's "openness" lends to users thinking apps are not worthy of purchasing, so few paid apps are actually doing well on the Android Market. In most cases, it costs more to build an Android app than it's worth.

I get that Android is huge. It's a nice second rung. But it suffers from countless flaws (UX and UI, market profitability for devs, device fragmentation, etc).

Ooh look, a couple of millionaires whining about their little arguments.

Update: Bring on the down votes, as I'm sure many of you worship these guys. I won't hold back my opinions with thoughts of losing karma. These guys are having little fits that so many startups have, but using their notoriety to get attention over it. Don't feed into it!

You are handling this differently in that you're having a fuss over it instead of just ignoring it.

I think the minute he starts complaining about the company, is the minute it's no longer appropriate to call it his future company!

Academically, he's trying to serve up a point. But he's potentially doing more damage to himself by doing so.

Get to starting your own company. I'd be curious to see what comes of it.

Selling twice as many piles of low quality, poorly designed phones as premium ones is still selling twice as much garbage. At the end of the day, just because you sell more doesn't mean your product is better. This is proof of that.

From a business perspective, Android manufacturers need to sell many, many more devices in order to even come close to Apple's profitability.

Look at how well Apple is able to not just manufacture their devices, but also design chips, main boards, visual and function design, create excellent software with profoundly amazing developer frameworks, and run meaningful marketing campaigns... all while turning an incredible profit margin.

Google and its manufacturing partners are simply not producing high grade and thoughtful products. So until they do, who really cares about it "outselling iOS 2:1".

That's right. It is the sum of our life, or possibly only a few moments, that the world may remember.

We may be known for a program we wrote, or how we treated our friends, or the three movies we acted in superbly. But the thoughts and daily gestures we make are largely unremembered.

I think this might help make the case that we need to live for today.

The detail screen is what I really need help with specifically. I could send you screenshots of the current state of the app (as the website is not reflecting this properly, they are about 6 months old). My biggest challenge has been presenting that one screen in an effective manner to end users.

I've long been considering putting together a directory of projects whose code is fantastic for learning from. There's just too much code out there, and it would be nice to see lists of "great iPhone code to learn from", "effective and architecturally sound Ruby on Rails projects that scale", etc. This would really require some assistance from the community, but long term I think it would highlight code from quality hackers, and improve the status quo of programmers out there.

Any such thing already exist?

I have always found these salary guides to be hit or miss. Depending on where you live, these numbers can be wildly different. Also, once you do take location into account, you have to remember that the cost of living in that area is likely much different. Supply and demand for the region also plays a big key.

In many cases, employers use these guides to gauge what they will tell you what "market rate" is, and a lot of shady employers will stiff everyone in the company. They might even tell you that you are at the high end of the pay scale at the company, which might be true since they're stiffing everyone.

Just don't use this as true self worth indicators, as chances are your category is likely lowballed.

I've learned that lesson the hard way too. I will from now own find it very difficult to work for anyone again, but when I do, it sure won't be more than 40-50 hours per week. In fact, I would actually get a real kick out of a 30 hour a week job. That retains time for the family, friends, personal development, and business/hacker projects.

Most employers are still too concerned with how much time you spend in their office, and not enough on output. Given the right kind of work, I can output a typical 50 hour week in 30 hours. In fact, given that opportunity, the motivation is built in.

Hey, I'd REALLY love if you could redesign an iPhone app for me. http://musedapp.com ... Mused 2.0 offers a ton of new data and I want it to look stellar!

Why would you need to ban something if you already had a superior product? It's clear that this constant exclusivity of Microsoft products by executives at Microsoft is driven out of fear and acknowledgement that the fruit company might actually be on to something they can't figure out.

Hmm, that's odd, because that's how they billed Snow Leopard.

Of course it doesn't, but it didn't really warrant a preview either.

But that doesn't mean you should quit either.

Hang in there! Don't stop now! So many startups fail because the founder(s) get burned out and quit early. Of the many success stories I have read, you always hear that they pushed through at the very end when they were feeling like it was a failure, and it became a success.

Sometimes success is just on the other side of the fail mountain.

Lion looks lackluster. As an app developer, I'm excited for the Mac App Store (and eventual Apple TV App Store) but the rest of the OS does not seem like a major leap, as they are claiming it to be.

Snow Leopard offered more than this coming from Leopard.

I haven't really seen an editor that has all the shortcut, macro, and bundle features that TextMate offers.

You're really lucky people are pushing you. I'd love to have that! Some of us are less fortunate, either because other associates are not interested in the projects you're working on, or because they're super busy in their own.

I don't get a lot of friends and associates asking about my progress, but I always make sure to reach out to them every so often to see how they are doing and offer myself as a resource if they need it for anything.

Just spoke to her and she said she typed it, it wasn't a worm. It's for Breast Cancer awareness. Supposedly you are suppose to write where you like to put your purse, and since it's obscure it sounds dirty.

Yep, my fiancé was hit with this the other day. I didn't even think it was a worm, just thought she and her friends were being silly.

While this tool is attractive, it was slow and clunky, and did not have a high match rate.