I don't know. I find (as an adult) I pretty much follow those same rules in my normal day-to-day usage of my phone (not exactly of course, but close). And I do that because of what I find to be emotionally healthy (connect with live people, not digital icons), polite (don't bug people too late) and reasonable (I have to pay to fix my own phone). It's called parenting, and it's pretty hard. It seems like society needs more of it, not less.
I don't think she was saying never take videos, just be measured. I read an article a while back where the mom said her kids merely lived life as a source of content for their Facebook feed -- and I see the same thing around me. This parent is just trying to help her kid come out well-rounded and balanced (which is not necessarily what we see with kids who are buried in screens all day). Kudos to this mom.
Do you work for Microsoft? Your comment:
"Valid concern if adding an extra mouse click here and there bothers you"
sure makes me think so. Yes, adding an extra click here and there is annoying, especially when it didn't add any extra functionality.
The great thing about propietary software and one OS (Windows specifically, OS X too though) is people using those operating systems expect to pay for their software. I'd love to come out with a Linux version of my software, but I'd then be competing with 10 free versions, and worse, a mindset that expects everything to be free. I gotta eat!
There is definitely a hunger in the Linux community for quality commercial applications in areas where open source has not traditionally managed to perform so well (Image/Video editing, games etc).
You would certainly have limited luck trying sell a C compiler or package manager to Linux users for sure, but there are certainly areas (including some developer tools)where there could be a market.
If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated 30 million) but you are competing with The Gimp.
There is a subset of Linux users who would never consider any commercial software, but this is pretty small percentage, at least that is certainly what Valve is banking on.
Mac users do expect to pay for software sure, but Windows users? Not so much since Windows seems to be the platform with the highest piracy as well as countless horrible "freeware" programs.
If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated 30 million) but you are competing with The Gimp.
Thanks for that -- a bit surprising really (current stats show Linux users out giving the other two). Is that because they are more willing to pay for software as Linux goes mainstream, or desperate for games? (honest question)
This is the same issue with mobile development that the author seems to be pushing everyone towards. Your app might really be worth $50, but guess what... you'll be selling it for $0.99 or you won't be selling it at all.
His attack on using developer tools was harsh, but I'm over 30 so it didn't apply :)
But seriously, I'm afraid he is close to the truth. As a career Windows programmer, I have great fear for the future after having tried the 2012 preview -- I've never felt so lost on a computer in my life. For my own selfish sake, I keep praying they'll make some changes before final release.
In my case, I sell my own software. So having a market that will buy my software is first priority. Providing support all day is not how I prefer to make a living. (that's fearful me talking)
I'd love to know the percentages of independent Windows devs that make a living selling software vs percentage of Linux devs that can make a living selling software. Sure, big companies will employ both, but how does it work out for the small guys?
Edit: I will admit Linux and its ecosystem are looking more and more attractive all the time...
You don't have to go full time into it. Just putting some hours in the week to toy with it. Doesn't have to be Linux - can be Mac[1] and Objective-C as well, just diversify yourself for learning & (maybe, future) profit.
try hitting the "windows" key more often :) case in point, hitting the windows key immediately gets you to the tile view where you can start typing the name of program you want to launch and its instantly there.
its a bit of a learning curve (a very small one) but once you're over you'll be glad for not having to browse through the Start> All Programs > XXX > yyy mess ...
This is one of the biggest things I'm grateful my mentor drilled into me: Never make a quick and dirty solution that anyone else (especially management!) sees -- it will become the final solution.
You know, the great thing about learning is that everything you learn turns out wrong. And after that the next thing will be that you learn that it's wrong that it's wrong. And so on.
So guess what, you will probably learn next that quick and dirty is an amazing thing. Sometimes the morbid, buggy stuff is exactly what's needed and a well designed solution wouldn't scale to it's task or wouldn't be used because it's so clean.
My friend was in the right place at the right time, had a small company that made millions. He figured it was all him, so he spent all of his money on a second attempt. It failed, and he's back working a j.o.b. now.
I wonder: If we could track enough of these cases where a successful entrepeneur started a second company (and then track whether it succeeded/failed), could we come up with a measurement of how much luck has to do with overall success rates?
I wouldn't say stronghold. IE is still the leader but by a relatively small margin in most English speaking markets.
The strongholds are China and Korea, where IE usage is well over 70%. In fact, considering that China has the most internet usage of anywhere in the world I have my doubts about the veracity of the world-wide graph. It probably drastically undersamples Chinese numbers.
StatCounter sees low usage from China (in page-views). The great firewall certainly plays a role. I wonder if said firewall doesn't also play games with the user-agent header, though.
I don't buy it. I just moved here from China a couple of months ago, and if anything I'd say 70% is an overly conservative estimation of IE usage. Both of my banks, for example, were accessible only through IE with an active X plug-in which made it impossible for me to check my balance on my mac. The same was true of many, many other sites. Much like the US was 10 years ago, only really hard-core geeks were likely to have firefox or other alternative browsers.
As for usage, I also don't buy that. Most people in China are online primarily through their phones, but in first tier cities (which is still a gigantic population), people have bandwidth that most Americans could only dream of. Youku, for example, streamed 5 times the hours of video content as all of Youtube last I checked. And Tudou (which it is merging with) was a competitor on the same scale! In terms of page views, I'd be shocked if Amazon had as many as Taobao. No US news portal approaches QQ. Actually, Tencet (owner of QQ) is considering buying Yahoo!. The only way in which China's internet is small is in the amount of money its users want to spend on content.
I disagree with your claim that bandwidth in 1st tier cities is anywhere as good as in the states. At work, at home, and in the cafe my internet is always slow, even when pinging local sites (Beijing). I'm always amazed when I go back to the states to visit and I can use...Netflix at my sister's place. Americans have bandwidth that we Beijingers can only dream of.
True about IE and banks, but its easy enough to use IE when banking online and switch to whatever else you want.
I don't know what the numbers really are; I suspect IE use is still high but might be lower in Beijing given all the Macbooks being used by the middle class.
It sounds like you just have a terrible connection. I had a 10mb connection for < 30USD/month and regularly streamed HD video, sometimes US video through a VPN. At work was even faster. That was in Beijing up until this May. It looks like I'd have a free upgrade up to 20mb if I were still there!
As for banking, the problem was that their active X component was a .exe download. Even with IE, it wasn't doable on a mac. ICBC did claim to have a mac app in the works, but I didn't see it before leaving.
Terrible connection in one location could just be a fluke, but in more than three locations? We've been thinking about upgrading our link, but many of our problems at home are that entire sites don't work, especially at night when internet use is very popular.
China is still not as wired as the states, South Korea is much better and could be considered to excede the states, even countries like Thailand and Indonesia provide much better bandwidth when I visit (and no GFW to boot!).
> Hopefully it will not be just a half-assed experiment again
And that sentiment is _exactly_ why I won't trust my business to whatever they come up with. There's no knowing how seriously and committed they are. Sure, Amazon could do an about face, but they don't have that history, so I'm more comfortable trusting them.
