obscura

There's way too much simplification and generalisation here, IMHO.

"Choose tools that are simple to operate over those that promise the most features."

Doing this very much depends on your requirements, doesn't it? What good is a simple-to-operate tool if it doesn't do what you need it to do? Sure, maybe you can simplify your requirements; then again, maybe not.

The example of troubleshooting a whitepaper form very much depends on the design of the system. Maybe there's a reason for having multiple forms. If they all shared common architecture and the problem lies in what they share, it's not necessarily more difficult to troubleshoot many as opposed to just one.

Moving from Marketo to HubSpot is good and well - for now. What about years from now? How did they end up with such complexity with the Marketo solution? Both solutions and requirements evolve. Down the line, you could end up with the same difficulties with HubSpot. I think it depends in part on how the organisation handles change.

Lastly, I agree with the sentiment of Mateusz Górski, who commented on the page: is there any hard proof beyond anecdote to back up the article? If you expand the article's concept of a system to beyond just software, all you need is a hardware fault in a third-party hosting company with lousy support for your simple piece of software to be down for weeks.

Long equations break out of the content box. E.g., view/5e33c093981ec41bc6b279b7

It seems to me that you expect a lot from a short opinion piece written on a personal site.

Odd - I'm not in the US and I can view it. Here's a link for you: https://openload.co/f/FFCGebcsLxY/Paul_Allen_on_Gates%2C_Mic...

I stated my view rather strongly. Thoughtful annotation is fine; annotation that means little to anyone but you or messily underlining the body text isn't very helpful, IMO.

> So while some may find annotations distracting and annoying, there are some that can find those same annotations to be pointers to a fuller understanding of the material so annotated.

The problem is that there's no guarantee that your marks/annotations will add value for the next reader. It depends on who you are.

Of course, such value is subjective, so it depends on who the second reader is.

Because of this, my preference is to have an unmarked book.

Also, the way in which you mark is the book makes a difference. Using the margins is fine - I can live with that. But when the body text is underlined en masse or seemingly arbitrarily with pen and by freehand, I think it's really hard to argue that value has been added.

Perfectly correct. However, my comment was not about the approach to learning - hence me labelling it a digression.

To digress from the main point: the suggestion of writing in (physical) books makes me cringe. Once you do so, they become absolutely worthless to anyone but you. Trying reading a book that someone else has underlined and/or annotated - it's highly distracting and annoying.

If the laws didn't apply to them, they would just ignore them. The fact that they haven't proves otherwise.

The GDPR has been discussed for well over 2 years. It came out in 2012. Before then, it was being discussed publicly. Its predecessor, the Data Protection Directive, has been around for a long time.

You really have no justification for calling it horribly thought through. Laws like this don't appear overnight and without wide consultation. In any case, if the requirement was to apply the law out every scenario before implementing it, pretty much no law would ever be implemented.

The aim of the GDPR is to make organisations treat personal information properly, not to penalise them for every little infringement. I very much doubt there will be enough capacity to deal with every minor offence; it's more likely that large companies or those with many complaints against them will be the first targets.

Ultimately, if you're not sure about something, you most likely aren't the only one. Things will become clearer as regulations and guidelines appear, and the first complaints are dealt with. If you believe you're behaving fairly, you're probably fine or at least that's something you can argue.

The GDPR was proposed in 2012 and has been heavily discussed since then. It was adopted in 2016 and as of 25 May 2018 will be enforceable.

Anyone who uses the data of EU citizens should have known about it. They certainly had plenty of time to consider the effects of it on their own operations.

And even where it is a right, it's not an absolute right - it has to be balanced with other rights and may be limited by laws.

Ha ha, I've also cursed Wired for all their ads, particularly at the beginning of the magazine. Them and the subscription card, though at least it can function as a bookmark.

If you look at just the space you're using, then sure, Dropbox is expensive. But if you look at the extra services on top the of the fundamental sync/store service, perhaps it isn't. Determining the value is subjective - it depends on what you want from the service, how many of its features you actually use, etc.

If you've come to rely on the extra services and/or have an extensive network of friends, colleagues, etc. who you interact with via Dropbox, you'll probably view the service as being more valuable that just the amount of storage space offered.

In addition, one of the things that Dropbox banks on is people under-utilising the space on offer, which enhances the perception of it being good value, especially if you're a long-time user - the amount of space available to you has been increased over time (instead of the price being decreased). It also lessens their costs, as they only have to cater for the amount of space actually used, not what could be used.

Fundamentally, offering cheaper options would chew into their revenues, as many people who are happy to pay for more than what they use would jump to those options.

You might like to read the first and second responses here for more on this: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Dropbox-move-to-a-single-Pro-p...