I've had the same experience the past few years with car maintenance.
- I can find any owner's manual online.
- I can find detailed instructions for any type of repair in written form or in a Youtube video.
- There are free online courses for anything from changing a tire to becoming a full-fledged mechanic.
- I can find and order any part of my car at wholesale prices.
- The same diagnostic software that repair shops use can be downloaded for free. I can hook up my iPad to my car through a simple USB cable and find out exactly what's wrong with it.
And I still take my car to the local auto repair shop, because I'm not a mechanic.
That metaphor doesn't work for two reasons. First, over time a car has grown MORE complex, while the tools to create a website have grown LESS complex. At the same time, improved quality in engines, motor oil, and service technology has made routine maintenance not only easier, but also less expensive. Second, auto repair, like most skilled trades, is a great example where specialization of workers gets involved. It's not that you can't spend the time to learn how to repair a car, it's that you consider your time worth more. But in many cases, the cost of building a website has come down so rapidly that it doesn't require a big time commitment for many people.
There will always be room at the high end to solve problems that are complicated, large, or rare. But at the low end, things that were new 20 years ago just aren't anymore. Website development is becoming less like a mechanic and more like pumping gas.
- Websites have become much more complex. It just appears that they are simpler. WP makes it seem like nothing to press a button and upgrade. Behind the scenes thousands of lines of code are doing work. When those lines of code break and you come to me to fix them. Fuck you for thinking I am going to charge you $100. You are going to pay me $1000 or you can do it yourself.
- If you want to use a theme exactly as it is then fine use it exactly as it is. If you want me to make changes to it, fuck you for thinking I am going to do it for $100.
- Websites are complicated as ever (with tools that don't match their behind the scenes complexity), they appear to be much simpler because a lot of stupid people have spent thousands and thousands of hours providing services for free through modules and themes. But when those things break down or don't work the way you want them to, you will pay for my 15 years of experience or you can just do without.
Out of curiosity (not being snarky), how's that working out for you, and how long do you think it will be viable to charge that amount?
Web dev, as I see it, is undergoing a race to the bottom. As you say, "the stupid people" are generating good content for free. Yes, there are 1000s of lines of code behind WP.. but those 1000s of lines of code exist just so that the end user doesn't have to mess with them. Do people really pay 1000 to adjust a word press theme?
They are not generating it for free. They sell themes at $50 pop to at least 100 people. They make their $5,000. They also charge $100/hr for support.
> those 1000s of lines of code exist just so that the end user doesn't have to mess with the
Until things break. The developer goes away, etc.
> Do people really pay 1000 to adjust a word press theme?
Depends on what level of adjustment. If I charge them $1000 they will get $1,000 worth of services. But I am not willing to engage a client unless they are at least willing to spend that much. Not worth my time.
Hey, no problem. Me and about a dozen friends only have around 3-5 years of experience but are more than happy to do the work for about 1/3 the price you want to charge. If they don't want to pay your rates send 'em our way!
There are also people in the third world that will apparently do it for $5/hr until what you get are shit results that are an embarrassment to look at.
In the case of Wordpress, the cost of labour for development and bug fixes on those thousands of lines (to the client) is effectively free unless you are extending it.
Yes but when you are extending it... it's not trivial. So the price curve jumps from a few hundred dollar to thousands of dollars if you try to do anything significant.
I guess the point of the article is that WP and friends already offer a significant enough amount of functionality straight out of the box or with a very minimal amount of custom code.
To be fair, if you have the time and the room, it really does make a lot of sense to learn some items in care repair. Similarly, being a fully trained plumber is a daunting task. Fixing most problems in your bathroom is actually straight forward.
Of course, some of this comes down to a value judgement. How much is it worth it to you, personally, to not have to mess with a broken toilette? :)
One thing I don't see people talk about enough in the context of home or car repair is liability. Not only do I not want to mess with a broken toilet, but if I screw up and flood my bathroom, it is my fault. If the plumber does it (less likely because they know what they are doing) then they are on the hook. For some things the cost of failure is low, but for many, especially when being paid a programmers salary, the marginal savings (e.g. 15 bucks for an oil change) isn't worth the time and liability.
The hinted solution then is for webshops to provide some form of liability protection for the client.
If the website is buggy (like a leaking pipe), its the webshops fault and reponsibility to fix. If personal information was leaked thanks to bugs in the website (ie, the leaky pipe caused a flooding), then again the webshop is responsible.
If a customer know that they are not responsible to maintain the website security and protection of data records from customers, then I suspect many would be willing to pay quite nicely for not being "on the hook" if something goes wrong.
To make that economical possible for the webshop, we might need to utilize regulations. With plumbers, they are forced to be liable, so everyone is competing with that assumption. It is always part of the price, and they don't have to compete with non-liable plumbers that can undercut the price.
Well, it really depends on the "fix". Most toilette problems can be fixed by a simple $5 part from the store. Hell, the last time a pilot light was out at my place, the plumber literally just scrubbed it with a wire brush. Just calling him out was $130. And no, I did not feel ripped off.
So, yes, there can be liability concerns. But there is also the line of thinking where "everyone should know how to cut the water to their house." Or "Everyone should know where the circuit box is to their house." etc.
Then there is the current reality. Getting stranded in a car accident is something that I would imagine is a lot lower in occurrence nowdays. I know how to change a tire, but I have to confess with cell phones being what they are, I am less concerned about my kids having this skill. I think they'll be ok.
I know your joking, but I feel like this is an important thing that's often lost on people. The other day I got in a bit of an argument on oDesk because I turned around a job too quickly. The guy didn't think it was worth the price we agreed upon. I had to explain that that wasn't a 15 minute fix, that was years of studying in university, and years of trial and error, and hard won experience to know how to solve his problem in 15 minutes.
I'm not joking at all. I had a consulting customer once that had a problem; I asked him a couple of things on the phone that he insisted he'd checked, and he pleaded that I come to Chicago in person and take a look, when I lived in Southern Indiana at the time. I said I'd bill him a day (which was generous; the whole thing cost me 13 hours).
Turns out that yes, one of the (trivial) things I had asked him about, that he'd said he'd checked, hadn't been checked. He was up and running in half an hour.
Then he didn't want to pay for a whole day because it had been so easy. But he did, in the end, pay for a whole day.
Yeah... I am dead serious that I did not feel ripped off. Learning a lesson is worth every penny, in itself. Having someone else risk a spark near a gas source is a special kind of cost. :)
Here's a crazy thought. What if they use this opportunity to teach kids about the processes of scientific discovery and how it is sometimes based on pure chance. What if they then teach those kids about the scientific method and how to conduct a controlled experiment. Even if the story turns out to be a dud I guarantee the experience would make the students much more excited about science than growing some cress in a window sill.
Or we could explain how a bunch of scientists are crackpots for even thinking such a thing.
I feel like you are arguing with me. I am saying this because a some people are commenting here about what the ramifications of this discovery is; others, asking "serious" questions about the quality of the research, as if they should have taken certain things into account. I am pointing out that this isn't the right context for that analysis.
Also, that education is not news to post here in the first place. This is not a website where children are learning about science. There are tons of "discoveries" made as school experiments: I don't expect to see them on the front page of Hacker News (unless, like, there is some kind of serious interest in the larger science community). ;P
Nevertheless, HN is not a highschool science fair. The reason this story is making the rounds on the internet is very plainly not to get children interested in the scientific process, but rather because wifi somehow being dangerous is a provocative concept and therefore a good way to get pageviews.
'We all' don't agree in the slightest, about this or the government's cynical attempt to blame the security failure in Benghazi on some random scapegoat's YouTube video. Speak for yourself and not others.
News media already use this format for developing stories, called "live blogging". That's what the article refers to with the term "slow live blogging". Like you said, it's slowly evolving rather than breaking news.
Unions were created to counterbalance corporate power. To say we should get rid of unions because they're not perfect is just idiotic. Ever since unions have been all but crushed in the US, labor protection laws have disappeared, strikes have become mostly illegal, staff can be fired at will and union members are intimidated. Maybe the answer is to get rid of corporations?
Don't forget government power. One person alone can not effectively negotiate with a local, county or state government, let alone the federal government. On top of that, government salaries are often so significantly less than corporate salaries that government employees can't afford attorneys who know corporate and labor law.
> Maybe the answer is to get rid of corporations?
Hyperbole aside, there is no silver bullet to the situation as it stands. And I'm not informed enough to make any claims as to what could fix it. I just find it horribly hilarious when unions are made out to be so evil and corporations are made out to be the good in any fight. Unions at least have the interest (to a degree) of their members to protect, corporations just care about profit.
It seems beyond outrageous to me. 200k news articles is the amount of news that is produced by 7 billion people in 200 countries worldwide. Those 50k reports is what comes out of counter terrorism by one just of those countries. That's not including the usual declassified military or police reports. There is 1 person for every 400 Americans producing and/or reading these reports. That is more than the total amount of law enforcement officers in the entire US. Tracking every email in and out of the US which seemed impossible before, seems rather trivial now.
> 200k news articles is the amount of news that is produced by 7 billion people in 200 countries worldwide. Those 50k reports is what comes out of counter terrorism by one just of those countries.
Right, but those 50k reports are about the activities happening among those 7 billion people in 200 countries. And many of those 200k news articles published by the NYT have a corresponding intelligence angle that is covered in the report. Remember, NYT only covers major world news, and a lot of intelligence reports are mundane things like "what is the intelligence impact of this new Russian oil pipeline?"
> There is 1 person for every 400 Americans producing and/or reading these reports.
Where do you get that number? That 830,000 number from the article is for people with top secret clearance. That includes everyone from intelligence analysts to military officers to scientists working on sensitive research.
"The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), located in Chantilly, Virginia, is one of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and considered, along with the CIA, NSA, DIA and NGA, to be one of the "big five" U.S. Intelligence agencies. It designs, builds, and operates the spy satellites of the United States government, and coordinates the analysis of aerial surveillance and satellite imagery from several intelligence and military agencies."
3,000 direct employees, plus many contractors like the above mentioned friend. Is the NRO any bigger because of 9/11 et. al.? Probably somewhat, but not all that much I suspect given how much they were doing before it. What he was doing was just supporting their general efforts. (His following jobs? Well, as usual I can tell you what technology they used, but nothing about them, they're more sensitive, so maybe he became part of this growing post-9/11 "hidden world".)
Such a useless comment. Everything you mentioned was arrived at by research which everyone shared when the vast majority of the research was happening...
- I can find any owner's manual online.
- I can find detailed instructions for any type of repair in written form or in a Youtube video.
- There are free online courses for anything from changing a tire to becoming a full-fledged mechanic.
- I can find and order any part of my car at wholesale prices.
- The same diagnostic software that repair shops use can be downloaded for free. I can hook up my iPad to my car through a simple USB cable and find out exactly what's wrong with it.
And I still take my car to the local auto repair shop, because I'm not a mechanic.