I like this idea, but the results have what I would say is "very low momentum" in them (not speaking with any kind of terminology here, just ad hoc) meaning that just as when you write L E T T E R S e..x..t..r..e...m...e...l...y... s--l---o---w---l---y you get much more wiggle in them, the two images on this page are very very wavy, as though the pen that drew them had no momentum.
isn't there a way to have lines be drawn by a hand that has inertia/momentum and is trying to follow the logical curve, but just wavers a certain percentage and correct as it goes along? This is what gets (in my opinion) the result we see. Someone drawing at a good pace by hand and correcting while he does so. not a "random deviation" around the logical path, whch is what these results seem to be more like.
only a few, as i explain in one of them. some of my other comments if they are extremely technical and analytical might instead contain a rational tag :)
i won't comment on the differences, which include the meaningless URL and useless "ncsi" in the text, and the fact that it still looks like an error rather than a successful test page.
The Apple page is absolutely minimal. Yet everything is in its place, and it can't leave any developer confused for a millisecond, or make a typo, as it's a human English word at a human, English URL.
Apple is Apple. Microsoft is a split millisecond of headache for a developer who rechecks his spelling of "ncsi" and the whole meaning of the ncsi concept three times to make sure his code is correct.
[1] This post is tagged as being creative (as opposed to rational). as a note, about half of my posts speak to creativity and design and half speak to rationality and logic. most people only do one or the other, so i can understand why each group is confused by the other. this lets me build two brands. just ignore the posts that don't apply to you.
Not at all cleaner. Don't test DNS resolution if you want to know about HTTP access, they are different and many networks or firewalls will allow DNS but require a login for HTTP.
I was specifically talking about that one page and its location. It is English, meant to be parsed as a literal by a program, it's not a random number or a response to a query, that .txt file is literally logically equivalent to the "succss" html page.
so, why is it so convoluted English instead of also just reading "Success"? It's just Microsoft being Microsoft.
this is not trollish of me in the slightest. if it doesn't apply to you, please just ignore it. I stand by the statement.
I'm serious in kind, but not degree :) I do realize it's pretty frivolous, and a bit funny.
It's also a good minimal example!
Even though it is only meant to be used as a literal in a program to check against with a regex, still, someone has to write that regex. Someone will either write in "Success" or write in " -- i just flipped tabs, clicked a link, then flipped back to finish this sentence -- "Microsoft NCSI".
so, ha-ha, but a little serious. it's a good example that pervades every other creative choice made at the two companies.
I did notice that, and agree with you. The minimal example continues: Apple does not care about standards very much, in this case doing something (caps html) for arbitrary reasons and counter to best-practice (and the standard), while actually very nearly being the current standard. But nobody notices or has much of a chance to notice. I have a lot of trouble imagining Google doing the same thing on the source code - I can only imagine Google using lowercase letters in the source, as is standard and "right". This is what separates Google from Apple. (many, many examples of this.)
...meanwhile, microsoft doesn't come within a mile of a current standard - it uses a .txt file (backwards compatibility to, in this case, 1982.)
Three founders is three too many. Businesses don't need founders. They need owners and they need managing directors. Too many people think that becoming the former magically makes them into the latter.
Here is a test for the next time you are founding something. If you weren't a founder, you were just hired labor, and someone tried to give you 93% of this company and total autonomy in exchange for running it full-time, but NO other support of any kind and you would be completely on your own in every aspect of running this company - would you accept this?
For most ideas, the answer is, "Hell no. I have a lot better things to be doing with your time than running your worthless company without any support from you, full time in exchange for 93% of it."
People somehow fail to apply the same standard to their own ideas. They accept this bad deal just because the person who "gives" them 93% (or 100%) of the company is one and the same person, themselves.
Let me illustrate with an example. Think of an idea for a web site that you have.
If someoe approached you with that idea and asked you to code it, but they would not help in any way, would you do so in exchange for nearly 100% of it? Probably not.
But when you make YOURSELF the same proposition, you often end up saying, "Yes. I will code this since the result is mine."
You forget that the result is not worth the work and you would not accept it under more neutral terms.
This is simply illogical. Stop thinking like a founder, and start thinking like a managing director.
i'm about to make a nuanced, technical argument, and i don't know if it's correct. if you understand it, your feedback is appreciated.
so, i believe information asymmetry is possible. i believe that many good ideas are in such a relationship with the world that the people who have them have an asymmetric advantage over those who don't: that possession of the idea equals wealth, as long as you are attempting to execute. (wealth in the net-present-value sense, not liquidity sense.)
this gives you the interesting situation that you can be walking along the road and, if you are the right person and respond properly, you can immediately in a bolt out of the blue become richer by the net-present-value of the idea you are just struck with: provided it is one of those asymmetric ones and you proceed to execute on it.
now. now, for the larger ideas (like Google), the net-present-value was in the millions. but if the people doing it had actually had millions of liquidity, they would not have been coding: they would have hired a coder.
so please assume p, where p is "a person with a net-present-value of $n million is currently coding something which will make money and then allow him to hire coders. assume that with probability 1 he will succeed."
as he is coding, before he actually has succeeded, what business is he in under p?
i would say he is in the information-arbitrage business. he is coding at $0/hour against the net-present-value of the idea he has. it seems to me kind of an arbitrage thing.
this is assuming p, which means that this is an assymetric condition where with probability 1 he pays off. obviously it becomes more complex as we get into probabilities other than 1 - but is this a fair conclusion about the startup hacker?
that he is arbitraging information asymmetry?
as i mentioned at the start of this comment, this is a technical argument and i'm not sure of its validity. any feedback is appreciated.
if you hate my assumptions (specifically, p) i still would appreciate to go with them as well as any other thoughts you may have, which you can address separately.
I think I understand and don't think that you are necessarily wrong but I'm not sure it is a particularly useful way to look at the world.
Enron was famous for booking predicted lifetime profits based on the ideas that they had and look how that turned out. It isn't logically wrong but it probably is too hard to do realistically, not just predicting the profits in the first place but updating them with circumstances.
If your person had his bolt in the blue and became richer the moment he/she heard about a competitor launching before them with a similar idea would instantly become poorer (as they wouldn't have the market to themselves) and they should remark their book value.
BTW without capitalised sentences and in stream of thought style I found this really hare to read. I suggest you work on the presentation before explaining it to anyone else.
sorry about the format, i'm intentionally trying to not so much to be accessible as to reach certain people who might already know. i'd like their feedback.
you are completely right that it's hard to peg the shift in present-wealth without a crystal ball, which nobody possesses - moreover, the future isn't even written.
so let's give you the crystal ball - it jumps wildly between valuation your net-present at a few million and hundreds of millions and sometimes billions and sometimes tens of billions and then millions again. it's useless.
but suppose that it is quite consistent that the idea is worth at least $20 million in net-present.
so, in this case - what is going on here when you, an only "competent" coder, are coding the idea yourself? Why would a millionaire code at a quality he could barely sell in the market (not being a coder), and which is just enough to show a prototype which gets funding, which gets the ball rolling, which... (all the things that lead to the net-present jumping between $20 million and billions, but never lower than the former).
So, what is going on here? Why is the person working at $0/hr producing work that's worth maybe $3-$4/hr? (buggy poor-quality spaghetti code php with no source control, for example.)
He is also directly losing a wage he could be earning elsewhere.
what is this behavior? What is going on here?
one answer could be, couldn't it, that he's producing low-quality, poor labor, because he has the chance to buy a chunk of a high-quality idea with it?
i mean, i personally know of a lot of stories of hundred-million dollar exits that started with an idea that the founder started following up on by-
- doing poor-quality accounting and business founding,
- poor quality legal research
- poor quality coding that had to be thrown away after his company was bigger
- poor quality biz dev that was mostly spinning company's wheels
a lot of other things of very low quality...
... but of quality just high enough that the idea pulls the company through, and his preconceptions can be changed by high-quality lawyers, his code is thrown away and rebuilt by real engineers, his b2b attempts are repeated by someone who can actually push deals through, his logo is replaced by a real logo that doesn't make you laugh, and so forht.
so, what just happened in this whole last example? what was the beahvior that led to it? (in abstract, theoretical, technical terms).
i want to know why he's buying his own low-price, low-quality labor, and why this works.
I agree with the logic but let me propose some additional benefits/reasons to do it yourself.
Freedom from responsibilities to others (employees, investors) could allow creativity.
Singular vision for the product without compromise.
No need to describe requirements to others.
Get a basic understanding of all areas while it is fairly simple before scale up (accounting etc.).
Also the pure logical case only really works when you have enough cash to invest yourself in building the business or you would have to put the effort into finding and managing investors.
The low quality version might actually be a good investment in the shift it makes in the external perception of value is sufficient.
if we're being generous, maybe apple just thought that it was a Swiss train station clock nobody cares about (which, in a way, is what the clock actually was), which their team kind of just came across (maybe in switzerland!) and thought they liked it despite its being unremarkable and uncelebrated, like "found art". oops.
this just goes to show that good art really is timeless. it's not about bs marketing hyping up art that isn't art without the hype. as apple just found out, it's still art without the hype.
I'm pretty sure that CUPS was shipping by default on some linux distros as early as 1999. I know I installed Caldera OpenLinux (2.2 or 2.3 maybe?) and Mandrake Linux (version 6 or 7 something) and both had it, detected my printers, and "just worked".
People print so rarely nowadays, it's more economical to go to the FedEx office on the occasions when you need something printed out than to buy a printer and ink or toner.
nothing remarkable. if any one of us were presented in a fabriacted "forwarded" quote by us,
> in this format...
and we didn't really care, we would probably defend the misquotation (unless we explicitly remember what we actually said.)
when was the last time you said: "If I said that, I was completely wrong: I feel the opposite on this matter."
that would leave someone looking like someone completely unreliable whose opinion shouldn't matter in the slightest. no shit people don't want to be that person and will protect what they think people believe they have said.
you could show this with a second study, in which people are asked to defend a statement others heard them make, but where the defendend KNOWS that what the other HEARD is not what they SAID. It's easier and probably in many cases will happen, that you defend what you know the other person thought you had said.
THIS IS WHY "DISRUPTIVE LISTENING" (sorry, I don't remembe rthe correct word at the moment, the meaning is "actively pretending to hear something else") WORKS SO WELL.
In other words. If you are told, "There is no way we can ever be interested", and you repeat to the caller, "so if I understand you you are saying that there is no way you can put it in this month's budget"
then the person will quite likely agree with that statement. You just changed their meaning and yet they will not contradict you.
I say "I was wrong" quite a lot in fact, and I think it's an important ability. Of course, it's easier when you've been called out on some trivia or an educated guess, but I'm not often confronted with something I said that is diametrically opposed to what I currently believe. Is anyone?
but we're talking about a few moments ago. it is a conversational thing - it doesn't make much sense to argue against what you've just been misquoted as saying a moment ago.
to justify the title, "how to confuse a moral compass" the methodology would have to remove the justification or public discourse aspect, and show that someone's internal or private belief actually changed due to the conversational obligation to defend what they are misquoted as saying. i.e. you would have to find out what they thought to themselves privately before and after.
maybe a way to do this would be to have an "outside friend" who is more trusted than any of the people involved in this fake context, and see if they would report a different opinion to this friend that they think has no connection or knowledge of the immediate social context, due to the misquotation in the immediate social context.
As it is,the methodolgy does not justify the conclusion. (as summarized for us, I didn't click through to the paper.)
more broadly, i've often said that there are two ways to build a massively successful business (e.g. $100m business, or one worth a billion or billions):
1. don't fail.
2. don't fail to massively succeed.
bootstrapping is all about completing mission number one. not going bankrupt. not falling apart. not having a bubble pop from under you when you need it for your business plan.
but people all too often forget about #2, and think they will just magically be a $100m company. It doesn't work like that. If you want to be a $100m company, do two things: don't fail; don't fail to be a $100m company.
this is genuine advice and I can give more details if anyone is unclear about anything.
I like this idea, but the results have what I would say is "very low momentum" in them (not speaking with any kind of terminology here, just ad hoc) meaning that just as when you write L E T T E R S e..x..t..r..e...m...e...l...y... s--l---o---w---l---y you get much more wiggle in them, the two images on this page are very very wavy, as though the pen that drew them had no momentum.
isn't there a way to have lines be drawn by a hand that has inertia/momentum and is trying to follow the logical curve, but just wavers a certain percentage and correct as it goes along? This is what gets (in my opinion) the result we see. Someone drawing at a good pace by hand and correcting while he does so. not a "random deviation" around the logical path, whch is what these results seem to be more like.