ckannan90

Pretty sure the comment you're replying to is talking about development time, not compile time. They're claiming it took months longer to develop a similar app in C, not that it took longer to compile. Even if compile times are negligible now for the reasons you state, they still have a point about it taking longer to develop an equivalent app.

you do realize it's a research paper; they're not trying to sell it to you right now.

No, I believe it means the programmer gets automatically paid when milestones are marked as done. They are referring to the 3.5k being paid for the job. Any revenue the app gets has nothing to do with them.

I read it exactly the same.

I don't think he was saying you should pay less. I think it was just an observation that people are compelled to pay now rather than put it off later, because they know the price will rise, which in turn will actually cause the price to rise for the next person. I think he was just observing that it's a smart system that both compels more people to put their money down, and slowly raises the price at the same time.

I think the argument about "hobbies" is a long term one, not one that applies to people who just got laid off. If there was no automation and everyone had to farm, nobody can pursue their "hobbies", because everyone has to work to meet their needs. At present, because of automation, less people have to farm. Because of that, people with a "hobby" of filmmaking can go make films, and other people with a "hobby" of watching films are able to spend their time (and money) watching those films. The argument is that automation eventually frees up society into doing less essential things and increases overall happiness.

Also hobbies is definitely not the right word here.

Not really. Employment is a trade of resources like any other. According to what you say, the employee is "exploiting" the employer as well, because he is trading his time and effort (which he values less) for money (which he values more). The trade works because both sides have opposite notions of value in the two things (time/effort vs wages).

Besides, the value an employee generates does not come from the employee himself (if it did, he could do the same task outside of a company and earn money). His effort is channeled through several other resources, including the efforts of other employees, capital and machinery, all of which was acquired and managed by the company. The company profits because the overall value generated by this system is larger than the sum of the value generated by any individual part. This isn't exploitation "by definition".

The three primary needs in China appear to be aircrafts, submarines, and... floating spherical homes.

I think the video needs to be clear what the difference in the service is. It's not that you can't send a dropbox link till it's ready (you can, the recipient just can't see it yet). The feature here is that Minbox sends the email when the file is ready, on its own. Which is awesome, but not what the video is showing. That bit is the last feature listed on the page.

Well at the end of the day, somebody still has to pay you if your business is to continue running. So unless it's an ad-based business, you're gonna have to figure out how to monetise. It could be targeted at university departments instead, for instance, who you would convince to buy a license for their cash-strapped students. Point is, your marketing would have to be geared to that particular case. If you optimized to get non-paying students, you won't make money.

That's such a strange thing to say. When artists create their work, do they rank them by the estimated number of years of their legacy, and discard the ones that fall outside of the copyrightable timeframe? I mean, are you implying there are artists out there who aren't creating works because they feel that this one is definitely a "life+75" piece of work, and so what's the point if all I get is life+70?

I'm not familiar with the situation in Europe/USA, but I've never had trouble using a GSM phone with any GSM SIM card from any carrier in Asia. I'm not sure about the situation for CDMA or LTE.

He's quoting a song.

I don't actually see the problem. The analogy between learning computer programming and learning to read and write is flawed. The written word is a tool which, to be used, requires both parties to know how to read and write. There is no way to use written media unless you know how to read. Computer programs are not like that. You don't need to know programming to use programs, and there is really no problem if most people don't know how to program. The real analogy would be programming, and knowing how to operate a printing press. You need this knowledge to produce the end product (programs and printed books), but not to use it. And that's fine, really.