Actually you got even less of a second chance in the dark ages. Bad times drove smallholders (voluntarily or involuntarily) into serfdom, after which there was not only no second chance for them, but none for their descendants either.
In the dark ages most people couldn't get credit at all, and you didn't get a second chance if you died from the plague.
Concerns about bad credit ratings are largely overblown. There are plenty of people who have filed bankruptcy and then within 2-3 years had brought their credit ratings back up enough to obtain mortgage loans at reasonable rates. Lenders need to lend in order to stay in business, and since so many consumers have had credit problems recently you can expect to see lending standards for credit scores loosened in the coming years.
The whole 'credit ratings' thing is uniquely North American anyway.
It's only because you let it happen, in most other countries a bureau that keeps that kind of privacy sensitive information on individuals would be against the law.
Credit ratings are just as prevalent in England as in North America. They are less heavily used in other countries but most countries have some sort of inter-bank debtor black list.
There are really not very many people losing their homes.
However, many people are choosing not to exercise out-of-the-money home purchase options. But this is more a problem for banks than for people, since the banks expected most of those options to be exercised.
The language "people losing their homes" is simply a propaganda term designed to encourage politicians to take money from renters and owners and give it to option (aka mortgage) holders.
Banks aren't foreclosing because then they need to write-off the losses. I know a guy who's been living in a house he stopped making payments on for 1.5 years. No sign they're going to kick him out anytime soon.
"It's a recession when someone you know loses their job. It's a depression when you lose yours."
I know people, personally, that are losing their homes. I'm kinda wondering how large your social circles are if you don't know anyone in that situation.
Now, the people I know in foreclosure probably should be in foreclosure - they got that way through bad financial decisions in 2006 and 2007, and they were certainly warned at the time. House prices can't stay overvalued forever, and maybe this'll give those of us who were more prudent with our money an actual chance to own a home. But "propaganda term"? Really? These are real people with real homes. And they're not as uncommon as you'd think.
A person in foreclosure is, by the definition of foreclosure, not losing their home. They never owned a home, all they owned is a call option on a home.
You can't lose something you never had to begin with.
Lets follow your logic. My lease runs out on Jan 31. Am I "losing my home"? If I'm not, what distinguishes my repo agreement/lease from other peoples call option/mortgage?
> Am I "losing my home"? If I'm not, what distinguishes my repo agreement/lease from other peoples call option/mortgage?
I actually agree with your basic sentiment, but there is an answer to this. Losing a mortgaged home hurts more than an apartment because people tend to have greater levels of endowment effects -
> In behavioral economics, the endowment effect (also known as divestiture aversion) is a hypothesis that people value a good or service more once their property right to it has been established. In other words, people place a higher value on objects they own than objects that they do not.
Endowment effects is looking pretty robust at this point, it's been shown on a lot of unrelated types of goods and services. People have a much greater attachment to a "home" than an "apartment" - I mean you can even think of the difference in connotation and prestige between being a "homeowner" and "renter" - this probably isn't a good thing by the way, but it's definitely real.
They are all sorts of people - one was a childhood friend that I played with when I was 3. Another is a 60-something friend of my mother's. A third (not sure if she's actually been foreclosed upon yet) is my former landlady.
It is good to have friends - or at least acquaintances - outside of the high-powered tech industry circles. Helps you keep perspective.
In pure financial terms, you're right. However, "people losing their homes" is perfectly accurate for some people. A home isn't just a house or an "out-of-the-money home purchase option", it's where you've put down roots and built up memories.
Some people made bad gambles, and are losing their "options." Others made bad decisions or were unlucky, and are losing their homes. Even if they're partially to blame, it's still a terrible situation.
At least today (I believe in most, but not all countries) we don't have the specter of debtors' prison. I'd say that was a pretty hard barrier to a second chance.
I think we can all agree that these are special cases. In general, you don't go to jail until your family bails you out if you can't pay your car, house or credit card bill. or your business loan for that matter.
I don't think we should be agreeing to these as "special cases" at all. Things are already too convenient for the state.
The government is arguably propagating these special cases at an alarming rate. At least one version of the "health reform bill" is reputed to make not having private health insurance a crime, as Massachusetts does at present. Sure, those who can document their poverty are supposed given help in these matters but this leaves a disturbingly large area where criminal codes are going enforce private debts.
In the Dark Ages, you mistakes were passed down to your children and grand children - seriously. It's only the rise of a mercantile society that allowed children coming up not to be judged by their parents and grand parents.
What works for me as a programmer is to get into the zone as quickly as possible. I like to set aside one day of the week to handle miscellaneous tasks. Other days its all about the zone.
There is a story about Schwab (Carnegie Steel) hiring a consultant to gave him the best productivity advice. The advice was to start with the most important thing first. Stick with it and when its done move onto the next important task.
Schwab loved the advice and promptly paid the consultant his fee. It worked even then.
I might be wrong on this but I will say it anyway.
The original idea for this came out of the Google App contest for Android. This was the idea that won the competition. So the idea was available for anyone to execute after that.
The red laser team might have come up with the idea independently or just learned about it from the Google Android contest. I am not sure if the contest or the app came out first. Someone here might know.
The latest version of RedLaser is much more impressive than what the Android guys were able to execute. It's able to identify barcodes before I stabilize my hand over the image, upside down, or sideways, almost as if I were swiping it. The vibration feedback and rest of the interface are a great UX touch. The app was brilliantly executed - both in UX and in hardcore vision algorithms. This wasn't an easy task - they deserve every penny of that $1m.
RedLaser was released on May 15, 2009. It works with original, 3G, and 3gs iPhones (although it is faster on 3gs). It was released for the pure need for that scanning barcodes was very subpar on the iPhone. They were the first (and I think still the only, most others license their tech) app on the iPhone to do barcode recognition straight on the phone (no need to take a picture or send it to a server to be 'read'). Until very recently that wasn't possible with horribly slow Android SDK.
I can think of at least two people - Henry Ford and Walt Disney whose success came after a long string of failures. And that's just the cream of the crop.
Highly recommend Neal Gabler's biography, "Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination". Fascinating and underpinned by seven years of exhaustive research.
The first fifth is about his failures. His failed animation and film companies. The entire 633 page book is about one man's obsession (with the biz ops help of his brother) with bringing reality to fantasy and fantasy to reality.
It may not seem to be your typical startup-type book but it's all about entrepreneurship, failure, and pushing the limits of technology and enthusiasm.
"But for all Walt's continuing assurances of improvement, and for all his genuine desire to make outstanding films, the Alice movies, even with Iwerks's contributions, were only slightly better than routine"
p.86
"In creating a world of his own from scratch, Walt Disney demonstrated, more fully and forcefully than ever before in his work, man's potential mastery, which has always been the inherent metaphor of animation."
p. 275
I developed a webapp (project management) before deciding to go native.
Some of the additional reasons why I believe users prefer native apps are:
1. The app store app and iTunes make it easy to discover native apps. Webapps are simply posted on a link from apple. This makes it harder for users to discover them. Here is the link to webapps: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
2. With native apps, users can take advantage of built in UI elements reducing the learning curve and creating richer applications.
3. Web apps can suffer from performance issues especially when you are on an edge network.
4. Payment processing was already mentioned. Its an issue but probably not a huge one.
I think the native look and feel and Apple's own promotion are the two big factors in favor of native apps.
The top competition for netbooks and the Chrome OS will the smartphones.
Smartphones are in a position to be your second computer in the next few years. Personally I prefer the smartphone but I can see some people wanting a web only computer.
Agreed. I did not buy an netbook because of my iPhone. I have 3 "computers"- my macbook pro, my iPhone, and my HTPC. Each is running a different OS for its specific purpose. Best of all, they all technically talk to each other.
I have now two published apps in the App Store. Both business apps - one in finance and the other in business.
The biggest change they have made that took me off their platform was their recent policy to not show updated applications along with new releases.
Let me explain. For the longest time, if you looked under released applications you could see applications that were recently updated. This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users.
Apple no longer allows updated applications to be displayed in the released applications list.
There is now no way for users to discover your application except for about one or two days when it is first released.
This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users.
It was also a great incentive for developers to game the system and swamp the reviewers by submitting trivial updates every week to keep their apps at the top of the list. Tragedy of the commons.
Actually, I think it's a positive thing to the user, since it encourages incremental development. Anything that incentivizes "release fast and iterate often" incentivizes good development.
On the other hand, it did tend to swamp the review process.
The lesser evil would have been to allow everyone an update at least once a month.
The current app store policies encourage developers to iterate apps i.e develop a bunch of apps in a month or two and hope one or two of them shoot to the top.
Developing compelling desktop level full featured apps over the long run are discouraged.
"Apple II, Macintosh GUI, Pixar, iPod and now the iPhone"
Have to admit, that's one hell of a score card.
Gates can take credit (as much credit as Jobs gets for above) for Windows, Office, and XBox. Then I'm sure Thomas Watson gets credited for some insane amount of stuff during his time running IBM.
Any other technology leader deserve to be in the above conversation, in terms of overseeing products with an outsize influence on the industry?
Macintosh GUI was pioneered at Xerox PARC, not at Apple. But Steve was smart enough to see the value in it and bring it into the marketplace with the Lisa. The Lisa flopped, and over in another building there was a team developing Macintosh. Steve got involved and the rest is history.
And the original design for the macintosh was utter trash and it wouldn't have even made the history books. The idea behind it was supposed to be a "toaster with an friendly interface". It would be like doing a $300 netbook, but with 1980s technology. It was going to compete with the Atari, not IBM.
Cut and Paste made the Macintosh. Double-clicking made the Macintosh. Beautiful (for the time) typography defined the Macintosh. The "Start-up" chime. The Fast boot sequence. The abandoning of legacy 5.25" floppies. All of these design decisions were Steve's. And love it or leave it, he made something remarkable and lasting. Something that inspires people to sign on for the "cult of mac".
well I was 15 years old when my dad bought our Mac, the Mac 512k. I thought it was a brilliant design, it easily fit on a desktop, was portable from room to room, it had a gorgeous display (compared to other computers at the time), and it came with a good word processing (MacWrite) app and a fun graphics app (MacPaint). I think making the computer small made it easier to approach for a lot of other people. You know, less intimidating. I've read quite a few books about the Mac, and they had their eyes on IBM, not Atari, as their primary competitor. And I think we have to credit Jef Raskin for a lot of the design decisions, after all, he was the one who started the Macintosh project in the first place, although his original vision for it was more like a netbook than what it eventually became. I still have my Mac Plus at home, sitting in a box, and it still works perfectly as it has since 1989 when I got it before entering university. It's the same form factor as the original Macintosh, and it's a design icon in the computer world.
Well, the one thing that motivates me to come back to entrepreneurship despite some past failures is simply the fact that,
There is a future in working for yourself. If your plan succeeds, you own your destiny and with it comes financial independence.
What is really the future for an employee? If the business goes south, you are laid off. If you work really hard you get promoted and make a little more. Hardly a recipe for financial independence.
Of course that's oversimplification, but the payoff in entrepreneurship is highly gratifying and motivating.
Maybe in the dark ages, a second chance was a lot easier.
Today all our mistakes (finances, internet posts,errors of youth) will plague us for the rest of our lives (seems like).