scott_meade

There are source links on the page. At the bottom.

"she paid in bitcoin, which was transferred into actual dollars "so there's a fixed price ... [and] we can actually pay her money back, if she changes her mind"

Seems no different than if the buyer had sold her Bitcoin and paid Virgin Galactic in cash. The real trick will be when they can accept Bitcoin, keep the Bitcoin, and make any refunds and adjustments in Bitcoin.

I'm at a loss of why associating ones company with Goldman Sachs is considered a good thing.

AirDrop does do what they are describing. Airdrop uses ad hoc wifi to enable iOS devices to communicate with each other without a router or some other networking device in the middle.

But it is not cross platform, obviously.

I like how Shaun Inman describes some of the benefits of journaling in "Lift Off. The Last Rocket Development Diary". He wrote, “By documenting your creative process regularly, you can identify patterns that make you appreciate the too infrequent peaks, help avoid the pits and hopefully make future creative climbs a little less daunting.”

There are things to learn from an accounting of history. A development journal is among the most personal of histories (not personal as in "private", but personal as in "relates to my daily life"). If you're not going to study your own history, one may ask why study any history at all?

Why does being a thinker take quiet time? The article never says, as far as I can tell.

I don't see anything about intent or reason for the "intercept" making a difference in the law http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511

So that means that no third-party services should be allowed?

When I send an email to a company that uses third-party customer support software to consume, parse, and host the email; I don't agree to the TOS of the customer support vendor.

When I send an email to a company that uses third-party software to parse and archive email for legal purposes; I don't agree to the TOS of that email parsing and archiving company.

It would be ridiculous and impossible to expect that I would agree to the TOS of each and all pieces of software used in the processing of my communications with a company.

It's clear Kickstarter has failed in trying to convince people that "Kickstarter is not a store".

* "I would order this..." * "I wouldn't be interested in purchasing..." * "I often buy things [from Kickstarter] in the hundreds..." * "I have no intention of actually buying a printer..."

What I really should have asked: Does the provision that allows you to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to works" allow you to circumvent network and data center security measures? I'd expect not, but I don't see where the bill draws a line between devices (phones, game consoles, dvds) and other types of information stores.

I'm asking for clarification of the impact of this bill. Do you know the answers to those two questions off hand?

If someone has information that they only want certain people to see, would circumventing a technological measure that controls access to that information be allowed under this bill? For example, internal documents, trade secrets and documents under NDAs?

If someone has information they only want licensed people to see, would circumventing a technological measure that controls access to that information be allowed under this bill? For example, publishers of stock market analysis which is released only to licensed subscribers.

"Don't wait for Google to kill your feed. " - Are you saying Google is shutting down FeedBurner?

"during a big project it’s important your employees don’t feel inclined to exit as soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m." That statement belies so many things about Mr. Pozin's outlook on employees.

1. The reason employees bolt for the door is because they have things to do. Believe it or not employees have lives outside of work. I can't think of any project that would be "big" enough to miss a daughter's soccer game or son's concert. And if that means I need to leave the office at a certain time to do so, then so be it.

2. By offering flexible hours, employers seem to be able to demand employees work long upon demand. No thank you.

3. Working long hours to crunch for a big project is shown time and time again to not be effective. Why not fight the cause instead of accommodating it with flex time?

All that said, I'm convinced the best, long-term answer is to not be an employee. Instead, freelancing will continue to become more and more common.

Yes, that's how it works and is why the TechCrunch article calls flat design a "fad".

ORMs may be "stupid", yet Basecamp manages to handle 400-500 request per second with Rails and MySQL just fine. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/287221705443774465

Good point Guvante. Amazon has always had a gross profit. Almost no comments here recognize the vast difference between Ecomom's and Amazon's income statements.

Ecomom: never had a gross profit. Amazon: has always had a gross profit.

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Gross_... and http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=4268...

Look again. I think he did include marketing and advertising as fixed costs, not variable. Top of page 4:

Fixed Costs ... Advertising

Their's was not the Amazon model. Amazon has always had a gross profit http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Gross_... and http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=4268....

The more product Amazon sold, the more money they'd make (or more accurately, the less money they'd lose).

On the other hand, Ecomom never had a gross profit. The more product they sold, the more money they lost. This is the situation you describe in the gasoline scenario. I suspect the gasoline model was not their strategy by choice, but by accident. The controller's assertion is that it's the runaway discounts that did them in. 50% discounts intended to be for one-time-use-only were used on almost all orders.

Whether it was a long-term strategy or a fundamental mistake, whatever they did is not the Amazon model.

Compare.

  $000's

  Amazon - Quarter ended March, 1996

    Net sales:            $875
    Cost of sales:        $695
                          ----
    Gross profit:         $180
    Gross profit %:      20.6%


  Ecomom November, 2012

    Net sales[1]:          $52
    Cost of sales:        $548
                        ------
    Gross profit/loss:   -$496
    Gross profit %:       -45%





  [1]
  Sales:       $1,089
  Discounts:    $(751)
  Warehousing:  $(152)
  Freight:      $(134)
               -------
  Net sales:      $52

I'm not impressed by the guy who convinced the monk to buy a Ferrari. That guy's raking in the dough, sure. But he's doing nothing to help customers. Do you really want to build a business based on customers that don't need or care about your product but got sold it anyway?

Programming is a mental juggling act. If I get distracted or stop unexpectedly, all the things come tumbling down to the floor and go bouncing and rolling to all corners of the room. It takes a lot of effort (and is no fun at all) to gather the things close, pick them all up, and start juggling again in an attempt to re-synchronize the moving parts in mental thin air.

Being "provoked to action" is not the same "making better decisions".

The relevancy that the author is talking of is of things that you need to decide where the need to decide did not come from news. In other words, if you read no news you would still have many decisions to make, right? The question is - does news help you make better choices in those decisions?

Said another way, how many decisions can you think of that: 1.) the need to make a choice did not arise from reading the news, and 2.) reading the news led to a better decision?

The election is probably closest to these type of decisions. But I like Tim Ferriss's approach to discuss pros and cons of candidates with trusted friends instead of the press.

21st century Beanie Babies

"This is clearly something that’s good for Twitter users all over the world."

I can see how it's good for sellers, but am missing how it is so clearly good for me as a buyer (which is what I assume is meant by "Twitter users all over the world"). Is it that I can spend money without learning about what I'm buying beyond what fits into 140 chars that makes it good? Do people do that?

"In exchange, they would agree to give up some percentage of their gross profit on the transaction."

Sounds just like a commission. If the problem is "marketplace founders are stumped when it comes to capturing any of that value for themselves", then the existing answers include commissions and referral fees. Setting up instant financing in order to have something to take a cut of may be a solution in search of a problem.

The article didn't make it clear how a side-project is any different than other of life's projects and distractions: family, sports, that home remodeling project.

If an employee's productivity at their day job is not acceptable, then hopefully the employee no longer has a job there.

It's interesting to consider if it's really your or my job to call on the government to "protect" other people that don't think about the implications. My answer would be sorry, but no.

I see. It is unfortunate all around.

"all you get for your efforts are customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event" <- spot on.

Said another way: companies' customers are a reflection how the company behaves. If you want customers who are a pain to deal with, who threaten to switch at any unmet whim, and who will step all over you as a vendor, then by all means go ahead and step all over your competition to get those customers. A company that acts like a jerk is going to have customers who are jerks and who wants to deal with that.

But if you want customers that are fans and proponents and evangelists for your company - then act in those positive ways yourself.

Glad the post ends with "time and metrics will tell". It doesn't really matter what readers of the blog post think. All that really matters is what do customers think (as demonstrated by their actions - signups? retention? support requests?).