Whereas I have eliminated several ERP vendors from medium-dollar searches when they dropped the "dirty laundry" phrase. Clue: the software vendor's "dirty laundry" is my bug and has the potential to destroy my business.

Um.... the same editorial team also runs the Cult of Android site. Bit of self-depreciating humor there I think.

sPh

Good summary by Ezra Klein, who has been tracking health care reform since at least 2008:

In conservative media, Obamacare is a disaster. In the real world, it’s working.

"On the whole, though, costs are lower than expected, enrollment is higher than expected, the number of insurers participating in the exchanges is increasing, and more states are joining the Medicaid expansion. Millions of people have insurance who didn't have it before. The law is working. But a lot of the people who are convinced Obamacare is a disaster will never know that, because the voices they trust will never tell them"

But how many paiiiiiiid???

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

7.2 million, a higher conversion percentage than private industry expects. Call the whambulence for the hard radical right.

sPh

OK, perhaps I should qualify that with "assuming the camera has a decent quality sensor". Although since Apple and Samsung do, that seems a bit redundant for a discussion about spec warriors. If someone is going to claim that their Nogood Phone Ltd QLX8732 with the 897MP sensor that produces images worse than 110 film is competing with the 5S and the S5 then I can't help them.

The fundamental point being that 98% of photos taken today are only ever seen on Facebook or similar, and those services downsample images to 0.25 - 1.2 MP at most. Start with a good quality 8MP image, crop it to 6MP, submit it to Facebook as a "high quality image" and you're down to 1.2MP. But even if you want to make prints 6MP generates an excellent quality 5x7 and a good quality 8x10 for all ordinary people.

sPh

- - - - - Cameras are good enough for most people, but some are faster than others and have things like optical stabilization and batter automatic settings / post processing. As far as performance helps this stuff, it matters. - - - - -

That's true, but note that the spec war arguments tend to focus on megapixels. Which beyond 8MP is totally irrelevant to anyone except a professional photographer, but the frothing over "mine has more MP than yours" is intense.

sPh

I couldn't help but notice the most adamant spec warriors in my group carefully avoided the topic of Apple's A7 processor when it was released. Whatever one things of Apple's design and pricing schemes the A7 was notable achievement that advanced specs in a direction unexpected by its competitors and which really hasn't been equaled to date. Yet for some reason it wasn't discussed.

Leads me to believe that there is something else involved in the chest pounding contest besides straightforward performance measures...

sPh

The first link was to top projects, which is of interest.

The second link claimed "most successful", but was listed in descending amount of dollars raised starting around $12,000,000 (million). If that's the author's definition of 'successful', great. The indie projects I back typically have budgets in the 5-10k range and about 80% of them produce a finished work. Who is to say which is more successful?

sPh

- - - - - This is a site to donate money for people to do a cool project. If none of the projects are allowed to fail, it would only be really conservative projects. If you aren't willing to take that risk, don't fund a kickstarter. - - - - -

/\ This

I'm not complaining. You are: you are asking that the standards applicable to investment banking and venture capital be applied to what is intended to be the donation box at the community art collective where you take your kids for pottery lessons.

sPh

- - - - - why can't you get money from a bank or VC? - - - - -

Because not everything in the world is done in expectation of cash ROI? A good indie film will end up being shown at local and regional film festivals (and now, distributed as a DVD to Kickstarter backers). A _really_ good indie film will be invited to national and international film festivals - which will cost the producers money to attend (successful project with negative ROI). How does one obtain a bank loan or VC investment for such an endeavor?

People apparently think Kickstarter and the like are mini Sand Hill Roads, whereas they are much closer to you kicking in $50 to your local community art collective.

sPh

- - - - - - You are half way to being scammed. Little guys, indies, whatever they use to help sell you on their trustworthyness, That's part of what they are trying to sell you. Its a noble sentiment. But in investment, nobility has no place. They are there to make money, and that's it. - - - - -

It is not a well-received topic in Chicago-school microeconomics, but there are other human motivations besides desire to accumulate more personal wealth than anyone else (pure greed), and other rewards besides cash ROI. Kickstarter contributions are not "investments" in any meaningful sense and do not operate the same way that venture capital placements do. If you can't see the difference you probably shouldn't be contributing to the former or investing in the latter.

sPh

- - - - - if the project fails - - - - -

If the project fails due to fraud, yes. Realistically some percentage of all speculative projects (40%-90%), whether funded through Kickstarter or not, are going to fail. That doesn't mean they or their principals were committing fraud.

sPh

People should identify Kickstarter projects out of interest, enjoyment, or just a sense of fun, and contribute no more money than they would be willing to use as kindling to start a campfire. If you contribute $25 in hopes of seeing an indie film completed - great if it does, sad if it doesn't. If you contribute $100 hoping to get a new piece of hardware, don't expect anything other than some p% chance that you will ever receive that hardware or if you do it will work as dreamed. If you don't have the money to lose, don't contribute.

One innovative and clearly risky hardware project I backed has people complaining that the base product shipped 2 months later than planned (hoped) and the premium product will be 5 months late. Um, guys: it was risky. There were commercial alternatives available at 10x the price. You knew that this was an attempt to create a mini-breakthrough, but you're griping because it was 2 months late and the associated app will need some point revisions? Get real.

sPh

It appeared from the transition forward that Mr. Obama was (and presumably is) also deeply impressed by the big-time consulting culture (McKinsey and their ilk). That inclination tends not to go too well with a need to get actual work completed.

sPh