marcofloriano

Maybe with a less stress, fewer hours culture they would have even more success in the long run. But how can we know that? I think we need leaders willing to take this kind of risk at their companies. Because the outcomes could really change the world.

I think it's because they mostly spend money on current customers not new ones. To attract new customers they probably use another ways (like SEO, cold call, and so on).

"The current road Alphabet is on doesn't seem to me to end in a happy place"

I think it's a natural (good) road.

Alphabet should be a good opportunity for Google owners to invest in outside business with a lot of potencial, like Space X. When you are "just" Google, it's hard from a business view point to invest in outside business. It's more like acquisitions and fusions. But with a strong group like that, you can make more moves with investors money. And Alphabet have a lot.

If your bets isn't giving you good results, let's start put some coins outside. But it's just a teory (don't have actual facts to support).

You've missed the point. The judge is in his right to punish the company, you don't have to defend that.

But to punish ONLY the company, not it's users.

He could impose heavy financial penalties, for instance. But affecting the life of 200 mm users? No way ...

I don't think everything is a fairy tale. Lots of our true happiness comes from basic things like security, eating well, education and good heath. In the current system, money can grantee you most of that.

An advanced capitalist country probably offers a good system for individuals to work and get those very important things. Without them, there's no happiness.

But, off course, we want more, much more. And after a certain point, it does start look like a fairy tale.

Hi, i´m a freelance web developer, small agency owner and instructor for six years now. Here´s my experience:

How do you get clients? (Comes before How do you price projects) - Usually from connections from previous work. Any kind of work. I´m a instructor, for example. Some student's ask for my work if they can´t do it. Or old clients recommends my work. Friends usually indicates my work too. - Internet Marketing myself and my business on Google Adwords and SEO.

How do you price projects? - That´s hard. Too many ways. None is the RIGHT way, i think. Usually i charge R$75,00 to R$100,00 hour (like US$35.00/hour). It´s even harder to predict how much time will be spent in a project. Experience helps a lot here.

Do you buy WordPress template? - Yes, for small projects or projects that don´t demands much customization. - No, for bigger projects (because i can spend money with my team (i have a frontend designer, a backend coder and a marketing assistant). For projects that´s demand too much customization (startups, business ideas and like) it´s better to code your theme from scratch.

How do you price SEO and maintenance? - The client indicates his monthly budget for the task (site maintenance, for example). My team works X hours according to their budget and our hour rate.

I work teaching Wordpress (and other CMSs) and i can assure you that Wordpress is the best option available for less savvy users (no programmers looking for a professional website). To this kind of users your statement (Wordpress is terrible) don´t make any sense. Actually Wordpress have an amazing ecosystem (maybe the best) for normal people (like lawyers, salespersons, housewives, and so on) who wants to learn (fast) how to create a professional website (something beyond Wix, for example).

Microsoft is behind in the game. It´s starting (only now) to focus on cloud and mobile. It´s like they are chasing the big players. But they should be leading the changes in the industry. IMO it´s a natural consequence of the past decade's focus: personal computers. To be the top player at 1999 on this high demand market, they had to focus. And now they need to reinvent their entire business. It´s hard, but hey have some advantages: good people (as this new CEO) and money, tons of it.

This

"Instead of shared folders create Staply groups where files and links are connected to the messages and not just thrown in. Share everything you want with anyone, file size and number of members is unlimited."

Could be smaller and easier to read.

I´m Brazilian. I have an online education startup for web designers and i´m working really hard trying to get education better here. My english is not very good, but we could meet at skype, if you want.

A lot of people here(Brazil) using your tool god job guys!

Man dont give attention to the bad comments and even for Google. That´s all about YOU and YOUR GUTS. You did an amazing job, just keep it up, keep on going, keep working and dont stop no matter what ! There´s tons of job to do and only you can get it done. Go rock the world !

# Tutorial videos for technological skills (word processing, internet applications, email) for people who don't know how to navigate technology but need it. #

Very usefull for me ... work on that right now.

It´s not so easy to take "risks" as it might look. Of course, if you cross a street without checking around, you can get some easy and fast risk.But in business and investments we look for another kind of risk. Risk = opportunity and it´s not easy to find for most people. In my opinion, you should think more like an enterprenuer, and not like a hedge fund manager (yes i´m a trader and cool comparison after all) because this kind of people have tons of money (and opportunits, and risk!) already avaliable, but we, mortals, need to start from nothing and that´s the risk you need to learn how to BUILD before jump from your current job.

You just dont know how to LIVE. Dont panic, You are not alone. Most people (and i´m like you) only exists and dont know how to live.

"t's not just that most of the those American air force generals began their careers as fighter pilots. No, the reason is more practical. American air superiority has largely been the result of superior pilots. The U.S. didn't always have the best aircraft, but they always had the most talented and resourceful pilots. And that's what gave the U.S. its edge. Will that translate to software piloted fighters? Research to date seems to indicate it will."

I really need some real non-american references to believe in such a thing.

I´m a CS graduate too (fifth year) and i know how you are feeling.

Before entering the course i was skeptical , and until the thirty year i fell like i was wasting time. The point is, when you are at the academic world, it´s not about how get real things done, it´s more about to learn general concepts to build a solid base (in terms of knowledge). With this base, you will be able to learn how to get REAL thinks done much more fast, in a very professional way(read, trustable for the "market").

Therefore, you are not going to CS (or Math, another good option) to get things done, you are going to build a very good "BASE" to get (a lot of) things done.

In a simple way, goes like this: Learning lisp, python, c++ and java, you are investing on "content" for your professional life. Going to CS you are investing in "context". A guy who learns lisp in a garage is very different from a guy who made CS and learn lisp by himself. The second one have much more "base" and a better context to solve problems, although both have the same "content" (the lisp knowledge).

Don´t give up on CS and try to be close from as much people as you can, specially the good guys ... in this way you will be building a very good "context".

Oh, about the programming language ... i think you are starting from the wrong point. First, you should pick up an idea or project to implement (something that you really want to do) and then you go for the language. And yes, the best way to get "content" is working on real projects. Ruby is good for scripting, as python and php are, so if you are going to build something for the web, you should not think about C, C++ and Lisp, just pick a language more close to the web related stuff. But if your idea, or project is about mathematics, desktop and hard calculations, forget about ruby and php and go for C or Lisp. Therefore you start choosing a project (or idea) and then the programming language to learn, not the language and then the idea.

Well, i´m a very noob just like you, and my words are probably full of lies, but that´s my experience in the last five years. Hope you can get something useful from this big (sorry by that) post.

And sorry by my poor english.

update : http://dailyapps.net/2007/12/hack-attack-install-leopard-on-...

Right now i´m trying to make this work, i will put my conclusions later.

Nice links man, thanks a lot. Got some nice talks from Evan Willians at there. Recommended http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1388

#13 My advice is generally pessimistic. Assume you won't get money, and if someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any more.

I´m a business wannabe from Brazil and i just laugh when i read that one. Here we dont have ANY chances of getting money from VCs so when we start something new, specially with technology, we never expect to get money. Ramen profit system is not an option at poor countries, it´s the law.

"Compare to artificial movement.(cars) Wasn't autonomous motion once a unique feature a living things? Why would you create a thing that moves if you don't also make it alive? All autonomous motion exists so that the organism can support its LIFE."

Compare artificial movement with real movement ... could not be much better if we have artificial movement better than real movement ? A car with artificial movement is nothing close to a car that have a human on control. That´s because the human is alive and can make a much better approach to the real world than a dead machine.

"Why create motion in a dead being? you can get close, like clockwork automatons, but you can't REALLY get there."

Sure ... and i think it´s a good thing to do, but it should not be called artificial intelligence, because intelligence is much more than just data and inference. When i talk about artificial intelligence, i´m talking about intelligence and not dumbness (or artificial close intelligence). If we have to create intelligence, let´s make it right, not close ...

"Likewise, there are ethical and practical issues with creating people to move things to support your life."

Only GOD can create people. What we can do is create machines, intelligent machines, just this, nothing more, don´t make mistakes, please.

By the way thanks for your awesome comments and sorry by my poor english.

Thanks for the advice jacquesm, i´m going to study everything deep before asking new questions.

"If intelligence is a matter of the kinds of mental activities someone/something is able to perform, what activities require DNA?"

DNA structures are like algorithms. The DNA is the information that tell our cells (and cells is the most basic unit of life, most important too) how to do things. So everything requires DNA ...

Life is not something inside you and me. Life is something present at each cell of our body. It´s not just the brain that can die, our finger, our foot, our skin ... everything can die. We are the combination of all this, we are not only our brains like Artificial Intelligence tend to think. Everything is interconnected to perform life. Including intelligence. Intelligence don´t exist for itself, it exists for the living being.

Look, i´m nothing and i just have very basic knowledge of AI, i´m much more a philosopher than a researcher. But, i´m trying to bring new points in order to find new ways to do things. So i´m just trying to bring up new points, not the final truth.

"Why does intelligence have to be a function of living being?"

It´s not a rule, i think, but what´s the point onto copying the functions of the brain and all other stuffs from "nature" if you don´t copy the most important, LIFE ? All the functions of human brain exists to support LIFE, including intelligence.

Sounds really dumb for me to try to recreate intelligence in a dead being, if intelligence is an attribute of living beings. You can get close (like data mining, neural networks and so on) but, maybe, we cant get REALLY at there.

Thanks a lot for your answer.

And yes, a lot of people are trying to recreate intelligence without life ... the problem is ... intelligence is a function of living beings. You don´t see, on nature, intelligent rocks,for instance. But you do see intelligent insects, like bees.

So first of all, i think we need to create some kind of rudimentary life and then develop intelligence on it.

DNA is the base of life. There´s patterns, a language behind the DNA ... so i do think we can use "programming" to create structures like the DNA to form artificial beings.

So i think it´s really possible to create life (artificial) and intelligence (rudimentary) with our current technologies, but we cant do that with our current paradoxes , our way to do things. We need new forms of think, we need to start thinking like gods, not like humans. Sorry by the poor enlgish.

What´s your browser ? Looks like Netscape ...

Brilliant !

I disagree with his post. Maybe this kind of approach works for employees ... but when you are an entrepreneur and need to get the think done real fast not because your boss is asking but because if dont do that you are dead ... the Joel approach is much more realistic.

At this scenario, the idea "Be smart. Be clean. Be simple. Ship! And keep a small roll of duct tape at the ready, and don’t be afraid to use it." is just impossible. You have to choose and you have to choose really fast.

$170 million is a lot of money ? Never mind ...