scriptman

I agree, it's a really complex interaction.

You have to consider: 1. The number of users that would never pay for your app, but are happy to download it for free. 2. The number of users that would never pay for your app without trying the free part first. 3. The number of users that would pay for your app without trying it for free.

You then have to consider the amount of revenue you lose from Type 3 to support Types 1 and 2. Hopefully you come out ahead, but you may not.

This is a really good point.

However, there are some apps that do have a model of $xx for unlimited use, even where there are ongoing costs.

This is sustainable if the app continues to gain new users, hopefully at an accelerating rate. It works like a pyramid scheme where the new users coming onboard subsidise the cost of the existing users.

I think part of the problem with freemium is that it changes your perception of where the value lies. The user discounts the value of the free component to nothing and only measures the value of the additional functionality that is unlocked with buying the premium portion. A lot of the time, this looks like a ripoff.

The developer on the other hand tends to look at the value of the whole application and prices the premium portion in consideration of this.

I'm not sure that I have a solution, except to say that the developer might be more succesful to discount the value of the free portion to nothing as well and only price the premium portion at a rate that considers the actual value that it adds to the user experience. I think you have to consider the free portion as a marketing expense.

Yes, it's still an issue. I prefer tab separated too, but it still doesn't help you.

This is true. But, it seems a waste for the hacker to spend so much time working on a problem that would already be solved if they used a vendor that specialised in what they wanted to achieve.

Yes, it isn't ideal.

What you can do is put 2 apostrophes in front of the number in xls/xlsx and save it to csv. The conversion will drop one apostrophe and when you open the csv it will still have one apostrophe in front of it followed by the whole number. Then you can use a formula like =RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-1) to remove the leading apostrophe. The number generated by the formula appears as a proper number again and is usable in calculations.

If you put an apostrophe in front of the number it will store it as text but will appear as a number.

Just to be clear - you can then save the xls/xlsx to csv and the csv won't contain the leading apostrophe, but will show the whole number.

This was really interesting, but it just seems like they chose the wrong fulfilment partner for their warehousing and logistics. I work for a third party warehousing and logistics company in AU, but we specialise in receiving orders from external parties in electronic formats and providing tracking information back to the orderer. People think that warehousing/distribution companies are all the same, but there are a lot of different niches. Some are strong with bulk shipping, some with small and fiddly picking, some with large national campaigns that need simultanous delivery. You need to do your research and look for which suppliers are being used by other companies that have a similar distribution profile to you.

This sounds a lot like Taleb's Antifragile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile

>The "overly" in that sentence is a value judgement. It may or may not be 'overly' to have a number of concerns over certain advances.

I agree, it is a value judgement. I agree it is possible that people today may or may not be overly concerned. But outside of maths, we only have value judgements to know what is a good decision and what is a bad decision. It all depends on what we want. What the author is pointing out is that you can't have your cake and eat it too - if we are so concerned about the environment to the point that it limits technological progress, then we'll have less technological progress than we would otherwise have had. I'm not sure you can argue with that. Maybe that's a good thing from some people's point of view, but for other people (including probably many people living several decades ago) the current level of concern that we have for the environment today would be unduly high compared with their perceived benefits from technological progress. But maybe we have our level of concern exactly right? Who knows?

>The difference between the 60's and current day is that they had fewer examples of the disastrous negative consequences that can accompany new inventions.

In absolute terms this is correct. Of course the present has more examples of something happening than the past. But you are forgetting that we have more examples of positive consequences in that have accompanied new inventions too. Why should the negative consequences be weighted more heavily than the positive consequences?

In relative terms, I have to disagree with you though. People living in the 60's had either lived through 1 or 2 world wars or had relatives and friends that recently lived through 2 world wars. Both of these wars exploited technological advances that meant more people could suffer the brutality of war than at any previous time in history.

>"We cannot know the consequences of our actions until we act" is not entirely true - we can infer and put in reasonable risk management processes.

You changed what I wrote, which isn't very polite. I said we cannot know "all" the consequences. I think when the word "all" is included it's hard to argue with. You are right though that we can try to manage risks, but the point I was making in the context of the article is that there is a risk when not acting too, which is difficult to measure but isn't 0.

I think this discussion has made me think more about what the author was trying to say - that people living today focus on the negatives of technological advances. I actually wonder if the language of "risk" has made that worse. I talk about risks myself all the time in my day job... something to think about :)

I think you are just proving the author's point.

The author is saying that people living today are overly concerned about the environmental effects of experimenting with new technologies when compared with people in the recent past.

You, being a person living today, have just expressed that you are overly concerned about the environmental effects of experimenting with new technologies. That's not a criticism, we are all a product of the time we live in.

That's not to say that people in the past had no concern about the environment, it's just that they weighted the costs and benefits differently to modern people when comparing anticipated benefits for humanity against potential environmental effects.

The author correlates this different weighting with increased technological progress in the past. I think that is very hard to measure as it really depends on what you value.

I agree that you can list examples of people racing ahead to use new technologies and there being negative consequences. But what about all the times that humans raced ahead with new technologies and there were positive consequences? If we didn't race ahead would we be better off or worse off overall? When you delay implementing a technology due to concern about the potential side effects you make people worse off in the interim than what they would have been if you went ahead. We can never really know what all the consequences of our actions will be until we act.