I swear I've read this before, and the consensus was that when they compared people who got accepted to the school but didn't go to those who actually went to the school, there wasn't much of a difference in income. The very brighest just tend to make more money.

The only exception is if you're a minority, in which case you should do everything you can to get into the ivy league school.

I know a lot of you guys are AMD fans, but seriously I think you're being a little over dramatic about them having a higher market share...

Even though there's hardly digital comics you can purchase, people still take the time to manually scan each comic as it comes out.

For manga, people even take the time to TRANSLATE it before they release it.

Just like anything else, piracy is based on demand, not convienence. People don't do all that work just because its easy, they do it because people want them.

The demand for ebook piracy may increase as people get more and more used to the idea of reading digital books, but wether or not a publisher decides to sell their books digitally would have no bearing on the chances of it getting pirated.

Yeah, I remember getting my first black and white PDA like 9 years ago and being so excited that I could read books on it.

I still have them, thousands of downloaded books, sitting around in a folder somewhere probably taking less than 100 megs of space.

I managed to get all of the Discworld, Sword of truth series, and Douglas adam's books plus a couple of series that aren't in print anymore. All before the kindle was even a glint in Amazon's eye.

When you're dealing with that kind of dedication to scan information, Ebooks and piracy aren't linked. Sure, you're making it slightly easier for them to do so, but at least your giving legitimate customers the ability to purchase them.

what a useful site! If I knew how to mod you up, I totally would just for showing it to me :p

Making the internet less confusing, one user at a time

Blackberry's biggest strength is its secure email. That's why so many corporations allow it. Assuring paranoid corporate people that their email is safe with them is practically their entire business model!

I can't imagine it would be worth ruining that reputation just to keep such a small part of their market.

Take away that, and all they have left is their little keyboards.

That was fun! Do you have another?

I think this nails it perfectly.
The question is biased in its very nature. How could someone possibly prove piracy failed their company, when someone can always just counter with "you just didn't get enough exposure"
Which is very annoying, because thats basically what we all struggle to do. I don't think its ever the case that piracy caused something to fail, but its much more likely that it prevented the business from getting the chance to succeed.

(For the purpose of this debate, I'm ignoring the "collectors". I used to download everything under the sun, and I wouldn't have given a second thought if one of those companies died. Instead, I'm talking about the people who would have paid money for it had they not been able to find it for free. The "on the fence" people if you will, those are the ones that it really hurts to lose out on)

I run a small business selling software, and I can tell you that when my app got cracked, my sales dropped by more than 30%.

Ponder that for a second. Imagine walking into work one day, and finding out you got a 30% paycut. Because well, someone in China was just bored that day.

Right now, if things continue as they are, its unlikely I'll be able to continue doing this for more than a month or two, before the rest of my savings bleeds out, and I have to move on.

Of course, things could change, I could catch my lucky break. And I've obviously made some mistakes, it wasn't just piracy that put me in this position. But that doesn't change the fact that I would be more likely to survive if more of the people who downloaded it actually paid for it.

And that whole "piracy is a form of advertisement" is utter crap, because only the people who already know about the program pirate it. Its hard enough to get people to know about the program, but harder still when they leave your site to find it for free.

Now, you can look at my story and say, people might just be interest in my product. It's cold. But it may be true. I may have just gone after a market that wasn't there. So who cares if I fail?

And I think that's the deepest irony in all of this. Because you know who cares? The people who are pirating my program! Obviously, it fulfills a role they need, or they wouldn't download it. So, they have a need that they want fulfilled, but because they didn't pay for it, I can't improve the software they want to use.

My Comic reader app does all that on Windows Mobile phones right now.
http://forums.comicreader.mobi/showthread.php?347-One-Year-Aniversary!-Special-Feature-annoucement!

As cool as it is, I wouldn't even dare call that an original idea.

But, if they're not going to listen to empirical evidence, that's not much you can do :p

This sounds familiar. Didn't this exact same thing happen with the DRAM chip makers like 10 or 15 years ago?

One of the greater contrasts between work and college.

At work, you're expected to do all the things they consider wrong. If you can save time by finding the solution online, or delegating the task to someone else, than that just gives you more time to work on the things that haven't already been solved.

In fact if the first thing you do when you have a problem ISN'T googling the problem online to see if there's already a solution, than I'd have to seriously question your skills.

After all, the whole point of programming is to make life easier. Not over complicate it.

Yeah, I like this point. Its not how "good" the hardware is, its about how useful it is. And that tablet would have been pretty useless.

Case in point: That tablet only supports 4096 colors. Thats going to look like crap, and no amount of insisting that its the best hardware money can buy will change that.
To put that in perspective, that's a whopping 16 shades of red,green, and blue to work with. You can pick up a crayonbox at Walgreens with more colors than that.

This is one of the things I struggle with working from home for myself. With no meetings and nothing to distract me, getting in the "zone" is awesome, but can be a little hazardous.

When I'm that into it, I stop getting hungry or thirsty, I don't get tired. I got to bed at around 6am, because the bright light hurts my eyes and distracts me long enough to think "you know, its 6am, maybe I should go to sleep" even though I'm not the slightest bit tired.
My dreams are all about the tasks I'm programming, but of course, since they're not grounded in reality, any discoveries there are useless.
3 hours later, I'll wake up. I'll spend maybe an hour waking up, eating breakfast, maybe watch an ep of the dailyshow, and than its back to the project.

I did this for 5 days straight once. It's absolutely fun as hell. Challenge after challenge after challenge. Like the best video game you've ever played. Its crazy productive. 3 to 4 months tasks get done in days. And at the time your mind masks all the downsides from you. You never get exhausted or sick of it. You don't realise how much time or days has passed.

But than you snap out of it. Your bones ache because you've barely moved them. Friends have messaged you and called, and you didn't notice. The fact that you've barely gotten any sleep hits you hard. You'll be fine one second, take a step forward and than all bam, all of it hits you at once.

And thats if you're lucky enough to have finished your task. If you've forced your self out of it because of "health concerns", than your mind makes it painfully clear, that you don't actually have as much choice as you thought you did in this matter. Almost as though you're being held hostage, you won't be able to focus on anything else at all. Your mind will constantly come up with new ideas that make you REALLY want to go back and see if it works. If you want to watch a show or play a game, you'll be lucky if you can notice the title. If you try to hang out with friends you'll be distant and distracted. If you try to do anything that requires even the slightest amount of thought, you'll be utterly useless.

And finally, when you're not in the zone its a stuggle. On the one hand, you know that if you could go into the zone all the work you're wasting time on would be blown away. Why should you do any work in this unproductive state when you know you could do it way better and faster when you're in the zone? But at the same time, there's this fear too. I don't want to lose the next 3 or 4 days of my life. Will this next task be the one that sucks me in? If I start this now, will I be able to make it to my appointment tomorrow? And is this strategy even physically healthy?

I haven't really come to terms with it yet. But hopefully one day I'll find the perfect balance :)

Ah, indeed. I believe we live on in the memories of the people who we leave behind. And in our accomplishments as well.

But you don't need religion to believe that. In fact, if I was to make a broad sweeping claim with absolutely no information to back me up, I would say it is a belief that is much more likely in those who don't have any religion at all :p

That would be a valid, except for the fact that Heaven is supposed to be some kind of reward for doing good stuff.
If you can get into heaven without doing those things, than it seems to defeat the point.