Quizzy · HackerTrans

há 14 anosdiscuss

Bad analogy. Partners in big firm get big bucks as the "rainmaker", legal skills are not why partners are paid well. If an attorney has only legal skills but no ability to land business, he will always be a junior partner at best or fired and replaced by a more promising graduate. Good attorneys are a dime a dozen, but rainmakers are worth three times as much.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

What happens when you get sick and need to take 10 days off? Family emergencies? A company with a "team" can give you that margin of safety. A One Man Band is great, but is not sustainable for long, because life happens. Startups are built to scale so that founders can step back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

I want a better enterprise security environment similar to Blackberry's. More business level productivity suites can be collaborative within a company if only the OS could support it. This is where Win8 holds most promise. Apple will retain market share with hipsters, girls and grandma, but power users are looking elsewhere. Nothing wrong with that.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Trolling for dollars?

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

The most relevant question is "whether the college experience (including life experiences and consequent employment value) is worth the attached price tag?" It's one thing when you are paying $5,000 per semester, but at $40,000 per year for 4 years? Unless those 4 years leads to an positive cash flow of $10,000 per year thereafter to repay this debt, I just don't see the rationality of paying so much for non-incoming producing B.S./B.A. degrees (biology, psychology, sociology, languages, etc.).

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

And this is why Groupon's business model is unsustainable - bad news travels faster and is more vocal than good news. Any business owner on the fence about using Groupon walks away after reading this post.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

The "fines for being wrong" can also include lawsuits when you inappropriately reject a customer because what your salesperson thought was Farsi turns out to be some Indian dialect because he's simply bad at recognizing languages and was recently reprimanded for his failure to recognize Farsi, so now he's more likely to commit a false positive due to paranoia. Good luck with that lawsuit.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

The Federal Law says nothing about selling to a person who has no intention of bringing the item back to Iran, but simply has either a Farsi accent or was born in Iran. There was no mention of an Apple policy that requires its employees to ask "What is your citizenship?", but instead automatically assume nationality based on the comment "I'm from Iran." If the onus is on the consumer to clearly state his citizenship, then shouldn't there be a sign that lists the legal conditions of purchase?

I am most bothered by the fact that the Apple rep recognized Farsi and inquired further. So is it pure coincidence that the Apple rep knows Farsi or is every Apple retailer trained to recognize Farsi? And even if the Apple rep recognizes Farsi and inquires further, what if the consumer lies and says "no, I'm speaking Hindi", then what? Polygraph test? Bring in an interpreter? Call security to escort them out?

Apple is walking down a very slippery slope here.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Makes sense for Verizon, and if they are being greedy, others will step in to fill the void.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

It's his "trial" skills. There is a team of lawyers, each lawyer skilled in one particular aspect of the case. Mr. Boies's specialty is pulling all the information collected/discovered by the various attorneys and creating a grand advoacy plan that includes strategy and argument. So an attorney incredibly astute at patent law may not be so good when it comes to verbal argument (specifically, appealing to the sentiments of the jury is an art in itself, and few attorneys are able to master this skill) and overall case strategy, but is able to effectively assist Mr. Boies in preparing for trial.

As a former litigator turned startup founder, I can attest to the difficulty of assembling the right team with the ideal point man for a trial, and when you do find one you respect, he is worth every penny. David Boies is one such man - nobody has gotten fired for hiring him as the lead trial attorney.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

It was not about the apologies but about the business practices that continued unabated. What good is apologizing for beating someone on the head if you continue to kick him in the shins?

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Completely agree. Rich black kids would have no problems; poor white kids are just as badly prepared as poor black kids; the common denominator is economic resources more than anything. Being rich affords the child several benefits: 1. Stay at home parent with the time to take the child to enrichment classes, help the child with homework, challenge the child to stay on top of his classes 2. Child has access to extracurricular experiences such as summer science camps, weekend scouting trips, leadership retreats, etc. 3. Parents are involved and interested in the child's activities - parents of challenged backgrounds work so hard to make ends meet that at the end of the day, they just crash in front of the TV and tell the kids to play outside.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

I find nothing wrong with the "Me, Too" Startup Syndrome. I know plenty of friends who went to medical school because their parents were doctors, or it's the "Asian thing" to do, and they turned out to be decent doctors. Same for lawyers, accountants and gardners; a lot of "me too" happening outside of the startup world. Unlike 30 years ago, many more people want to go into technology because it's hip to be in a startup - hell, thanks to popular cinema (The Social Network) and mainstream technology (iOS/Android) geekie hobbies are now cool. People got mocked for playing with their Timex Sinclair in the early '80s, whereas today I have to sign up early in order to reserve my son a spot in the mobile game development bootcamp. Times are a changing, and the OP sounds like the indie college guy who's resentful that his secret band is now being followed by everybody.

Other "me too" activities: marriage, children, golf, smoking, religion, tantric sex... sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. All a part of life.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Let's talk about the mobile only world: would a native mobile app be self-verifying in that only a mobile phone could download and use the app - so every review requires a real smartphone to post the review. Although "reputation" companies could game this situation by buying 1000 smartphones, but then you would have 1000 smartphones with the same pattern of up-posting such that it would be easier for an algorithm to recognize these "planted" phones.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

I'd like to throw in the practicalities of survival income that many college applicants fail to appreciate because they are so used to living off their parents' dole. The following are steps that young people ignore until it's too late:

1. Before living your dream or doing "something you love", you have to make your survival income: the first $1500 for food, shelter, transportation. So where does this steady $1500 come from, and is working the necessary hours to make $1500 going to leave you with enough time to invest in that "dream"?

2. So before graduation, have you established your fall back $1500 contingency plan? Do you have a skill (vocational or otherwise) that you KNOW will bring you that monthly $1500? Step TWO is where I believe high school counseling has failed America's youth. Everybody should leave high school with a $1500 skill, whether that be bookeeping, welding, sales, waiting tables, cashier, etc. It is imperative that upon graduating high school, you are able to count on having survival wage skills.

3. Does your college major allow you to skip step two because it is in such demand that the employment rate for your industry is healthy? Back in the early 90's, CS graduates were not having an easy time and were considered the bottom of the totem pole among engineering majors (in my school they weren't even considered engineers, but rather a soft science more akin to biology, insultingly enough). Again, this is the fault of high school counselors who fail to make foresight an essential part of the planning process - this whole "major in what you love" crap just leaves graduates with a sense of disappointment when they are unemployable. Always temper "major in what you love" with the caveat "as long as you already have a skill to pay for food/shelter/travel".

4. What's your exit strategy from your survival job? Plan this every day as you're waiting tables (bartending, welding, dancing,...).

4. Knowing that high schools (both public and private) are too highbrow to ever consider vocational training for their top students, it's up to parents to fully prepare their children. When my son is old enough, his summers will be spent honing a vocational skill so that he will have an employable skill that any society will find useful such that if he wishes to travel the world, he can always pick up a local job should the circumstances demand it. Two come to mind: welding (easier and ubiquitously needed) or electrician (harder, but more lucrative).

This long rant is a part of my disatisfaction with the high school paradigm as currently constituted. The current paradigm is a crapshoot that ill prepares students for the rigors and realities of survival in a world that could care less if they were once a valedictorian or All-State track star. I have known many former high school heroes turned zeroes after college, and it's a fall from grace that their parents have never ever prepared them for because in their world, their kids will always be special.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

"These days" means everything after 2010 when the sex scandal+insider trading+FBI sting caused the ouster of super executive Robert Moffat, thought to be the next CEO of IBM.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Zynga's business model is like any other gaming publisher (such as EA, Blizzard, etc.). To succeed in gaming you MUST have a pipeline of games that continue revenue growth. If you cannot create your own, then you must acquire indie developers (OMGPOP recently). In time Zynga stock will be no different than any other gaming publisher stock. Look at Blizzard: other than Diablo, Starcraft and WoW, it has created nothing in the last 4 years beyond sequels. Homegrown innovation is nearly impossible.

Rovio was in the business for 5 years before Angry Birds, and I doubt they'll have another hit like Angry Birds ever again.

Id fell apart when it couldn't come up with something better than the Doom franchise.

OMGPOP was very smart to sell out to Zynga, because there is no way it would have come up with something even close to Draw Something in another 5 years.

Unlike rock stars and pop singers, creating a string of gaming hits is so much harder because it requires the perfect storm of so many variables each and every time, whereas a single person like Adele, Amy Winehouse, etc. can rely on their genius alone to create a hit.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Excellent point.

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

Jason, your gut instinct is correct. Groupon is a Ponzi scheme in every way: last customer in gets no money out. I feel sorry for that Mom & Pop pizza that paid $1,000 to run a Groupon deal, and expecting $300 back in 60 days, only to see Groupon go belly up and get nothing but a letter that says "Please send your creditor claim to the bankruptcy trustee listed below".

Quizzy

há 14 anosdiscuss

It is when you need new sales to pay for the cost of maintaining existing client base: 1) client #1 pays you, but you have to give him back half at a future date, 2) while his money sits in your account, you spend it on operating costs, 3) get new client money in order to pay client #1 back.

It is that money sitting in the account that gives Groupon the cash flow it needs to hire more sales people to grow the revenues further, but remember always that a % of that must be returned to the customer at a future date. Where it falls apart is when your new sales can no longer replenish the client account (no it does not sit in a trust or escrow, but in company's general operating account).

So what happens when Groupon declares Bankruptcy? All that money sitting in the account is gone, customers get NOTHING back. Yes, this is indeed a Ponzi scheme because the last customers in get nothing, even though they are owed the %.

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