You're going to get crucified for suggesting a Microsoft product on slashdot :-P - but I agree with you and was going to say, it, too. We use it for distributed teams and I find it works exactly as we want. Dare I say we even use it with Surface Pros? Any tablet screen would work, though, iPad, Android or otherwise.

You mean like this:
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Which allows you to have IE 6,7,8,9 and 10, all installed at the same time. And running separately. I used to use it when I needed to test websites I was developing on multiple IE versions. Now, I just test in Chrome and everyone else can suck it. :-p

Good summary. Anyone looking at going to work for themselves should read this.

Fortunately, while I'm the techy, my business partner is not. He's a business consultant (which I did as a living for a short while too but I'm still fully aware that I'm too focused on the tech). I'm lucky to work with him as he is 100% about the business, so it keeps me in check.

If you want to start your own company, then one thing matters: cashflow.

I ran a side business from about 2003 until 2010 when I decided to quit my job and go into full time business, where I still am today.

All the good ideas in the world don't matter for anything if you don't have income actually coming in, day by day. You can have the biggest profit on the balance sheet but if you don't have actual cash in the bank, you're dead. So you find yourself perpetually chasing debtors, chasing money and doing work you would rather not be doing because it pays immediately.

My advice is - start young, don't wait. When you're like me and you have kids in private school, cars, mortgages (and now staff), you can't have bad months. When you're 23 you can afford to eat noodles or whatever if it slows down, so start young when you're not already tied up with responsibilities. Make sure you have a couple of stable (couple - not one) customers, who can pay you some money each month, so you're ok and you can survive one of them going quite for a while - because they will.

Don't base your business on a dream of money coming in once you make something unless you have deep pockets (i.e. a start up) or no costs.
Don't base your business on one customer because a) as far as your government is concerned (at least most of them) that's not a business - that's being a consultant, which is not the same thing for taxation and b) if they hit a rough patch, you're screwed.
Diversify your customer base as fast as you can. Don't assume that a project on the horizon is going to happen because it my fall apart for reasons out of your control.
Minimise your outgoings, always. This goes for IT, rent and every other cost.

The bad thing about running a business is that you're running a business. If you love development or cloud or IT or whatever, if you start a business doing it, you wind up running a business. You have to chase leads, find money, do your taxes, pay staff, hire staff. Manage them when they're lazy or pissed off or bored or whatever. Pretty soon, you're not doing development or whatever - you're going to some shitty "business leaders breakfast" to hear a bunch of PHB bang on about their latest buzzwords because of the off chance you might get a meeting, which will allow you the privilege of spending 4 days making a detailed proposal (for free) to then give to someone so they can never bother getting back to you to even say "no thanks".

All that said, I wouldn't leave it for anything.

Wow. I just watched the show. That was really bad. I get that they rushed out some crap for legal reasons but I think surely this just puts another nail in the coffin of any chance of this making it to a great show, one day? Why can't WoT get the GoT treatment from HBO?

This was just awful. My biggest fear is that they're going to utterly screw this up - and basically make this.

Why can't HBO pick this up and make a GoT level effort out of it?

We used to do this to people when I was in Uni - hop on IRC SexChat channels, pretend to be a girl and get people to run "self extracting zip files" that were really just installs of Sub7. This was some time back in the 90's. People fell for it All. The. Time.

Of course, this was the 90s and people didn't have their guard up on the net as much back then, I suppose. Still, it accounted for many hours of hilarity, back in the day. Surprised people would still fall for it, almost 20 years later.

True

I don't think you're getting ripped off; I get why you make your purchase. No side is wrong or right and it's not wrong BECAUSE Apple are making money. I expect them to and I expect them to make as much as they can.

What I'm talking about the somewhat bizarre phenomenon that's (almost) unique to Apple fans where by Apple's profit margin is recorded as some kind of "win" for Apple against Android's market share "win" - but fans see this as a win for them - the Apple fan themselves, instead of for Apple. It's not. No matter how you present it, it's not. It's a win for Apple. It's one thing to expect a company to make a profit but it's a whole different thing to be proud of a company, that you don't work for or own shares in, making money out of you.

Now you can enjoy your phone all you like - there's lots to enjoy about it. And it's good your provider is profitable and stable; those are good indicators for the future of your product's support (but don't kid yourself that you're not being tracked - I promise you that you are. If you read slashdot and you don't think iCloud stores your IP address, then I'm a little shocked).

However, Apple's profit margins being high is not something for Apple's customers to be proud of, when they're funding them. Can you imagine people being ecstatic - and I really mean ecstatic, if you've ever read Daring Fireball or watched an iPhone keynote - that Walmart or MacDonalds had huge profit margins?? (Note: we don't have Walmart in my country, so I'm trying to pick a company that will resonate with most readers. Hopefully it's a good example). It's such an odd thing to be proud of!

Thanks for the info. Hopefully we'll see them here in Australia sometime before they're superseded but it seems Google and Microsoft are going out of their way to forget we exist, down here, lately.

See, I understand the mentality that drives someone to spend more for a product, so they don't look like a "poor person". I even understand that people are happy to pay more for status or premium, etc.

The point I'm trying to make is that Apple fans go one step (or more maybe?) further than simply justifying the higher price - they go to the point of claiming that Apple's higher profit margin = a win for them, the Apple consumer. It doesn't. It equals a win for Apple.

Unless they own Apple shares, Apple's profits are not a reason for Apple's consumers to be proud, yet somehow, at every iPhone launch, Tim Cook (or Steve Jobs) gets up and says "we made x billion profit this year" and the crowd goes berserk. The Daring Fireballs of the world cheer *Apple's* profits as somehow *their own personal* victory over other people's consumer choices. "Apple made more money than Samsung so I am correct for buying an iPhone and you are foolish for buying a Galaxy".

That aside, how is the Nexus 6? I have been seriously considering buying one, if Google ever remember to release them in Australia but I've heard they suffer from lag and poor battery, due to the quad-hd screen?

Oh I get it - I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. Despite what you say, I am not really young anymore, though I wish I was! I remember Apple being on the ropes and I've been around long enough to fully understand the Apple phenomenon. I've owned Apple computers (currently none because work has surprisingly lead me down a very Microsoft centric path in the last couple of years and I found all my Macs just bootcamped to Windows, so it was kind of a waste).

I even get the bit about paying more for what you love. That's all fine and good. Perfect reasons to spend more. I drive an overpriced car, I am sure.

What I don't get is people who are outright happy that Apple makes a larger profit margin per unit - and they are the people funding that unit. That makes _no sense_. I'm not talking about people who are happy to pay a premium for a "better product" - I am talking about people who are actually happy that some company is over charging them and have turned this into a "win" for themselves. So *Apple* charges more for a product that costs less to make - and the consumer who buys it is *proud* of this?? That is completely bonkers. Unless you own shares in Apple, this should piss you off, not make you feel like "the winner". The winner, here, is Apple, not the consumer.

The fact that their RDF or cult or marketing or whatever you want to call it has produced people who will even perform the necessary internal mental gymnastics required to not just justify the higher profit margin but actually internalise it as a "win" for themselves, speaks volumes about how good Apple has become at this.

I've never understood the true-Apple-fanboi approach to these figures, which is always joy and pride, like they've somehow "won"? The amount of times I've heard people proudly tell me how Apple has the highest profit margin on their phones - a phone which the person who is telling me this is holding - truly makes me shake my head. I can't think of many other scenarios where people are proud that they paid more for their device and the people who sold it to them paid less to make it.

When did "I win because I got ripped off the most!" become a sane argument?? By all means, be happy the company is stable and will stick around to make more devices for you or will money to invest in future devices but for goodness sakes, people, stop being proud that you're being ripped off!?

According to a referenced article on the link above, he got a lot of help from a Comp Sci friend, in setting up the site - but the guy doing it wasn't fully involved - just giving bits of code and advice. So it's conceivable he knew enough and had enough help to get the site running - but didn't think through all the elements of what he was doing, properly.

It seems he told his GF, who later broke up with him and told her friends... one of whom posted on his Facebook page: "I’m sure the authorities would be interested in your drug-running site". http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

Never fear - Samsung is still seriously considering buying BlackBerry: http://business.financialpost....