I can see what you are saying (however, I don't agree), but I think there is a bigger issue afoot: there are just too few companies that do any one thing, i.e., in a world of 7+ billion people, there are only a handful of companies that make feature-length CG films that the majority (of movie ticket buyers on the planet) watches. Because of this, those handful of companies are a virtual monopoly (cartel), and can, and do act in this bad way.
And I continue to just not get it... I have no idea how people can compare Uber, which uses drivers who must have a license (not just a driver's license, but a license/permit/insurance to transport passengers, and must comply with local laws), and Airbnb, which has zero regulation, and most of the time hosts who use the service are violating local laws (at least in the US). The two services, at a service-functional level, are just not the same.
I would like to ask laughinghan what sparked the interest in this article? It has been on the front page of HN before (and during laughinghan's tenure on HN), so I am really interested to know the though process about posting it again (it was the same article as before, but with a new link). I have nothing wrong with this being posted again, but I see it over and over again with numerous topics, and I do find it kind of fascinating. At first I thought maybe laughinghan was a newbie on HN, but that's not the case, so this just makes it that much more interesting.
The basic Emacs key-bindings should work in all Cocoa apps. For instance, the URL bar of your web browser, while text editing in just about any editor (maybe even in Office, but I have not tired in a while), etc. Basically, anywhere you have a cursor, the basic line-editing key bindings should work.
So, in practical terms, this means you have 1 + n clipboards[1]. The main global GUI clipboard (using the command key), and then an app-specific clipboard (using the control key with Emacs bindings). As a developer, it is extremely helpful to have two clipboards in TextMate, for instance.
[1] Technically, the clipboard in OS X maintains a history (not sure what the limit is), but the OS X GUI only exposes the last cut/copied item.
All of these are great to watch out for. However, the "Value Billing" one seems a little like, oh, let's see... Software! Programmers do value billing all the time. We write one piece of software and charge n number of customers for it. So, if programmers can do it, so can lawyers.
Perhaps it is time for people with incomes lower (and very low assets/net worth) to be able to deduct their rent from their income, the same way mortgage interest is...
My response to the "I have nothing to hide," or "Don't break the law, and you have nothing to worry about," crowds is the following: If you have nothing to hide, then you should not be opposed to having a "black box" installed in your car. This way, the next time you are pulled over for any reason, the police/highway patrol can just plug into your black box, and if you have exceeded the state speed limit at any point (since it was last read), they can just give you a ticket on the spot.
The Office of the President of the United States is controlled my the machinery of government. At this point, the person you put in there does one thing that we need to pay attention to: appoint judges. Everything else is just nuance of a system so entrenched, even the staunchest Green Party candidate would have problems doing anything he/she claimed as a candidate. Once the person is elected, "realism" kicks in, and the person is merely a guide on an already sailing ship.
Too bad computer and internet literacy tests are not required to be eligible to run for Congress. Our systems is so messed up because members of Congress are living in the Dark Ages in terms of their knowledge about technology and the internet, and the only ones feeding them any info are "rights holders" (read lobbyists).
Jack Abramoff was on "To the Best of Our Knowledge" on Sunday night, and all I can say is, we're f*&^ed. I think I will start donating more money to EFF.
Maybe it is time for Sexual Harassment Prevention Training for all YC startups...? One thing that Aaron Swartz was vehemently opposed to was misogyny in the programming world. I think this is yet another instance where we can honor his memory.
It started as Simple Cloud Identity Management, but once it got to IETF, it was changed to "System for Cross-domain Identity Management". This initiative has been backed by Google, Ping Identity, Salesforce, Cisco, SailPoint, UnboundID, and others. You can see some of these names on one of the RFCs:
This API is just for identity management, and it has taken years to get to this point. I think it would take many more to get to a common API for everything else.
Yes, it is editorializing. My point is, but I guess too subtle, that the current link text is very much an editorial comment, especially since the content at that link location has nothing to do with the sites mentioned in the link text.
pg, or someone else from HN... Could you please edit this title for accuracy? Maybe, "Poorly designed sites taken out because of problems in one Amazon availability zone."
The difference is a matter of scale. I believe the loaning of books is allowed the same way you could loan out a physical book to a friend, etc. Loaning out a digital book to n people is just not the same. Likewise, libraries, which do loan out physical books to n people (but still less than is possible with a digital loan), pay more for their books for this very reason. If you want to loan out your digital book to n people, then you are going to have to pay a lot more for it (and that is just not part of the current equation).
Yes, and I would pay even more for Facebook if it meant they would not track me the way the do. For this reason I have never pushed the "like" button, and basically only use Facebook for (occasionally sharing) photos (of my dog).
Absolutely! I would gladly pay money for my Twitter account each year (in return for them not offering the sponsored tweets). How much is that worth to me? I would pay $20/year for that, easily. I would probably even pay $5/month. But you know what? No one has ever asked me!
I guess if you are looking to start a company that offers a free service that you try to monetize later, than ten million is the new one million. But if you start a company where users pay right off the bat, then perhaps you only need a few hundred customers. Sortfolio being the perfect example of an app that generated hundreds of thousands dollars/year, and took way less than one person to run.
This is the perfect illustration of how consumers are at the very tail end of the market. So many decisions have been made before consumers "vote with their dollars/feet" that they usually have little "choice." I put choice in quotes because big companies hate consumer choice and it is why they will always prefer to do business with a sigle entity that makes decisions on behalf of the consumer. For instance, the monopoly beverage contracts that every restaurant has with Coke or Pepsi. As a consumer, you don't really have a choice in what to drink at a (fast food) restaurant, as that decision has already been made for you.
Really awesome. What would be really cool to see is a demo and example code of an app that has authentication, and user-level permissions on the data. These "everyone in the world can update a global list" demos are getting pretty tiring.