Humans have repurposed viral mechanisms for gene therapy, so this is actually untrue.
In addition, "germ theory" and early science related to antibiotics and widespread misinformation led people to think all microbes were bad. Now people realize that that we have flora on the outside and inside of our bodies that are helpful and part of our body's ecosystem. Viruses will likely in the future be understood to do more than just hurt us and introduce genetic mutations.
Giving it away for free is a usually recurring/ongoing loss incurred to increase addressable market.
In addition, people that get things for free tend to be more potentially critical of those things.
That means that to increase addressable market and increase potential for sales, you are increasing the amount of critical feedback and response.
As the OP said, you must be focused on customer service, and it is even more true with Freemium; however, at the same time, you have to provide a substantial carrot that the rabbit actually wants to get conversion to happen. For example, I probably wouldn't have started paying for Pandora if all of the following weren't true:
(1) For free or by paying, I knew they had music I liked and would play a variety for not much effort on my part but I was still able to control it; basically I was pleased with the product.
(2) By paying, I didn't have to listen to commercials.
(3) By paying, I could hear a substantial difference in sound quality, but the free sound quality was good enough- it just wasn't as great as the paid version I heard at a neighbor's house.
Good argument. I thought PG had some good points, but I also think that the problem is not only the RIAA and MPAA (among others), but it is our government, which is incapable of handling the complexity of copyright and trademark infringement issues without screwing up something. It is a terrible thing that the creators or copyrighted material are suffering.
But the biggest issue is that we have a means to transfer almost any audio or video data almost anywhere and copy it almost indefinitely. No matter what laws were created and will be created, they can't beat that force. Data is and/or will tend to be free, like it or not, and that has changed everything.
To solve this we all pay subscription fees for some music service and some video streaming service and hope that it all works out in the end. Why? Subscriptions don't inflict as much pain as paying for a song or video every time you want one. So they are the best way for the creators to get compensated.
Great idea, but note that you shouldn't actually use it, and if you do- not much. Putting dyed paper on your hind parts like that is not good for you over the long-term. For women, it may cause cystitis infections. The FDA and DHHS said it can cause cervical cancer and outlawed it in 1987: http://www.ehow.com/list_6863028_health-concerns-colored-toi...
Ugh, I wish I didn't know about him but Oprah had a lot of the world brainwashed at one point that he was the man. He had some interesting ideas, but he is just another new age evangelist trying to sell his wares. Basically anybody that doesn't write the books for free is about making money.
If you read the whole post you'll see that there is a lot of respect given to emacs, which I use vs. vim. I agree though- vim is like a religion lately, not just on HN, but everywhere there are developers around that use OS X or *nix.
I like Google personally, but this is a good post. Really, really long though and a little too emotional for someone trying to convince others vs. just ranting.
I think that Google to some extent can play the "do as I say not as I do" game and get away with it with their users, and behavior like that which is described will take care of itself over time. If Google pisses enough people off, there is always Bing or DuckDuckGo for search, iOS for mobile, and plenty of people waiting to adopt Gmail, Google Phone, and Google+ users.
But, Google needs to handle complaints in a better fashion so that they avoid being slapped, publicly, like this.
I for one appreciate that you provided the advice. Anything that helps others get along without being divisive is a very good thing, so please don't absorb any of the criticism from comments here.
I think personally that learning more than one language is very helpful, but like anything else, the more you learn, the more you can get mixed up, especially in tech interviews. :)
I personally don't mind some subset of our population being extremely rich. They've made sacrifices that I don't care to make or have had luck or skill that I do not have. The ability to become remarkably wealthy is a great liberty, just as the ability to refuse it or share it. I think that any individual should be allowed to accumulate that sort of wealth if they are able to, perhaps to do great things with it that we can not or would not do ourselves.
In addition, "germ theory" and early science related to antibiotics and widespread misinformation led people to think all microbes were bad. Now people realize that that we have flora on the outside and inside of our bodies that are helpful and part of our body's ecosystem. Viruses will likely in the future be understood to do more than just hurt us and introduce genetic mutations.