This interests me the most. Could you shad some light as of why you switching knowing the cost will go up. You say it will improve conversions, but #1 isnt PayPal still the most well known payment system over the web, and #2 dont they offer payment via regular credit cards?
What you trying to do here, is replace better option with narrower one for all customers. If anything, you should add Google Checkout, as I got used to using it over PayPal (and sometimes wont convert) because PayPal got me real mad couple times in the past.
Aside: I do not think that is a the nice problem, as there are way easier ways to generate aleph-0 such triangles (I think most mathematicians would agree the simplest is 3x,4x,5x for x in {1,2,...}) But that is not what this question is hinting at.
Any more details about the project, or is it under wraps?
But in this case they didn't. It's showing Flash for me. Maybe you sign-ed up to HTML5 by mistake.
youtube.com/html5
http://www.ps334school.org/admissions/anderson-school-7th-gr...
The school accepts new applicants for sixth grade or seventh grade, but not for eighth grade.)
But, really, the problem with the system is not mostly about how teachers are rated, but how little power most parents have to shop. If a teacher is doing a good job for a particular learner, most parents will be glad to seek that teacher's instruction. And if the parents are shopping, the hard-to-measure things in the aggregate that are crucially important at the individual level, for example whether or not a teacher encourages a child to do his or her personal best, will be given proper weight among all the trade-offs involved in choosing one teacher over another. But right now the great majority of pupils, in New York City and elsewhere, are mostly assigned to teachers without parental power to shop, and teacher advancement in the profession is based mostly on seniority and degrees attained
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html
rather than on the basis of the teachers meeting learner needs better than other teachers. The best way to promote system reform is to let the parents have more power to shop. They will ask for the information they need and weigh it in appropriate ways.
I'm not opposed in principle to the idea of statistically ranking teachers and giving the power of choice to parents, but you guys have royally fucked it up in practice.
Signed,
A victim of the evil socialist Canadian public school system.
If I did all that, would I be guilty of something? Probably conspiracy and a dozen other crimes.
Ok, now, if I'm doing the exact same actions, but I'm a member of the government, does that make my actions less of a crime?
If something is a crime, does the criminality of it change depending on who is doing it?
Is it ok for the president to murder someone but not for a distraught spouse?
Is it ok for an FBI agent to set up a terrorist plot that gets foiled, but not ok for a truck driver?
Imagine in both cases, before the plot can be put in motion, that law enforcement swoops in. The plot hasn't occurred yet, so they haven't actually committed an act of terrorism. But they did plan one and engage in a conspiracy to do it.
In that case, isn't the FBI agent legally as guilty as anyone else in the conspiracy?
How can the law be relative and let certain members of society off the hook- especially if, as it appears, those members were the primary conspirators, and without whome nothing would have happened?
Whether this is "entrapment" or not is besides the point here-- if participating a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act is itself a crime, then isn't organizing the same also a crime?
And shouldn't' criminality apply to anyone, no matter what their profession.
If the law starts treating certain members of society differently than others, you don't have the rule of law so much any more and you start having two classes- the untouchables and the common.
Police getting away with speeding doesn't always hurt society (thought it does cause wrecks) but over time, it seems natural that more and more laws will apply to the common folk and not to the "elite" and the elite will come to use their powers more and more for their own advantage.
This disconnect is corruptive in nature, I believe.
This argument only considers half of the problem. Yes consumers are needed to create jobs but what is needed to create consumers? Jobs. You can't be a consumer without an income, and for the vast majority of people, you don't have an income unless you have a job.
Therefore for failing to acknowledge this fundamental, very simple and might I say, quite obvious fact, I think it's fair to say Nick Hanauer's reasoning is at best weak, and at worst disingenuous.
It makes one wonder what his motivations really are. Attention seeking contrariness? A desire to ingratiate himself with the 99%?
"rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small."
Ok, where to start
You can have "a job" essentially in two ways:
- Being self-employed (doctor, lawyer, etc), or create your own company. This is usually the minority of people
- Having a job at a company
So, yes, companies create jobs, next
Big companies create more jobs (per 'unit'). Smaller companies create less jobs (per 'unit') but combined they make more jobs in total.
Companies create an opening because of: increased production (or more customers, in case of services), new line of business. This is ignoring regular turnaround where someone quits to go somewhere else and someone is hired to replace.
Hence, new jobs comes from: - New products / services
- More people consuming existing products
(we could add loss of efficiency as well)
Now, bigger companies have a much easier time hiring new people. HR is set and knows the drill, they usually can accomodate new people with their existing profits (maybe not a lot, still)
Smaller companies have a much harder time hiring another people. Suppose you are a one man company, and you want to hire someone. You have to be HR (this cuts into your time). You may be not sure if adding this person is going to increase the profits enough to cover for the extra costs, etc
So when you cut taxes to all companies, sure, you're helping the big guys, but also the small guys.
The rich have an easier time dodging regulation or sending their profits to Ireland and back, but not the small guy
"And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class" (from the article)
Yadda yadda yadda. You want to grow the middle class? Reduce taxing on them!
But the government won't do it, because the middle class (still) has the most money available (amount of people x taxes payed by each one) and the least resources to avoid them.
In the example you gave elsewhere, the image would be http://billr.s3.amazonaws.com/J7W5uY instead of http://billr.s3.amazonaws.com/01C03E08-4CFD-4709-87C9-BB60FD... - so bit.ly wouldn't be needed.
The suggestion elsewhere in this discussion to encode the entire bill in the url is probably the optimal solution though. With a bit of caching it's probably the cheapest you could run your system (sans S3).
> I have no qualms with walking away from projects, as I expect that if the idea is valuable, someone else will be happy to step up and take my place;
Up to here I agree. However, the article continues with:
> it's more likely that several people will step up and the strongest will survive - which is best for everyone.
To my experience, this is the #1 reason why promising projects fail: The maintainer goes away, quietly, leaving everyone in confusion. I always thought this would happen only by accident (previous maintainer overestimates his/her free time). Nobody should do this on purpose.
It is really minimal effort to drop a quick note about dropping the project and naming a successor.
HN readers for the most part are probably not in need of his motivational/inspirational "speeches" and articles. And most understand the desirability of passive income but understand its challenges, obstacles, and reality.
Someone similar who shares Mr. Pavlina's strong beliefs and desires for everyone to achieve their life's goals and live every day to its fullest is Ramit Sethi (http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/) with his own book and numerous other "programs" like Earn 1K. Ramit recognizes and addresses the reality of passive income and recommends not going after it at first.
Both Ramit and Steve are excellent reminders and motivators to keep working towards your goals similar to 21times.org daily email newsletters for startups.
UPDATE: I like what someone else said in another comment here. Paraphrasing it: Don't think of it as passive income, think of it as delayed income.
Huh? I'm having a really hard time imagining how this could possibly happen. Does that person not ever need to buy anything? If they don't buy things they're taking that money out of circulation, and if you have a central bank targeting anything (or free banking, or most banking systems humans have tried) the people who can make more money will make more money in order to hit their targets. I'm pretty sure that nobody mentions that because the idea is, well, pretty ridiculous.
Here's the same street, but I need to work harder for a better location.
(http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sebastian+Strasse+berlin&...)
Lol Google, your urls.