I can say without a doubt I prefer buying a laptop from Apple to anyone else I've tried due solely to the lack of options.
Over the last couple of years I've tried a few times at different vendors to find a different laptop, and every time I've given up because of all the options.
My problem is that when I'm presented with so many options, I spend hours trying to optimize them, and being unable, I give up.
> Most freelancers will not build and/or follow-through with their ideas, because they perceive their opportunity cost to be too high.
I wouldn't quit my job for this (if I had a job), but as a freelancer I'd consider taking a month of no client work and building it at what amounts to a reduced hourly rate.
The parent post mentions "billboard" but it is a digital road sign (at least the ones I've seen). It's on a pole higher up so people can see it easily, similar to how many billboards are done.
> To read them back in, you fed the tape into the terminal and it simulated typing your source back into the computer.
reminded me of this story (which came at a much later date):
> A senior NASDAQ official saw Peterffy's setup and said Peterffy was breaking the rules: All orders had to be entered through the keyboard. He gave Petterfy's group one week to fix the problem.
> Peterffy and his engineers came up with a solution. They built a robot with rubber fingers that typed entries into the keyboard.
Sweet. Something similar has been on my ideas list for a little while now. Glad someone is doing it, because it needs to be done, and the idea never excited me to action.
Given the focus of this community, I'd expect there to be a high density of people producing APIs, so I'm particularly interested in feedback from you all.
I see cost is mentioned a lot- but if BizSpark still runs how it used to, you can get a lot of tooling for free to start with, until you grow to where the cost wouldn't have as much impact on you. (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/)
I have a friend in the Bay Area who started in .NET, and had so much trouble hiring programmers they scrapped it and started in a more fashionable platform.
I don't know what others' experience is like, but you might consider the ramifications of that potential problem.
I'm still learning to identify my sources of procrastination, so I'm not sure I've found anything effective yet.
On the other hand, I have done a couple of test/soft-launches this year, and have lost my fear of failing on those. That's more than I had done in the prior 10 years of being a programmer with aspirations, so it's progress.
I still struggle with probably doing too much before testing an idea, but I also struggle with doing too little, so I'm trying to find a balance. Learning, still, really.
I'm not advocating whether or not the patent should be awarded. Instead, I was trying to indicate that I felt like in 1995, it may not have been straightforward simply because not many people would have thought to even ask the question.
I guess one way to ask it might be, "how does one find a straightforward path to an unknown destination?"