What part of 'also did not take any alternative form of compensation (stock options, bonus, etc.) since 2003' do you not understand?
Steve Jobs reckoned he was rich enough. He was working for fun, not for money. Most good engineers are not especially money motivated. We like making things, and he did that. Well.
I had one of the very first Archimedes boxes, back before it even had a proper operating system (it had a monitor called 'Arthur', which was really very primitive). But it was a really good feeling sitting in my university bedroom with a computer which in terms of raw processing power was faster than the two fastest machines the university then owned put together. Those original ARM boxes were, by the standards of their time,very remarkable: much faster than contemporary DEC VAX, Motorolla 68000, or Intel 80286 machines. The DEC Alphas which came along at about the same time were faster, but they were also hugely more expensive!
If you give regular lectures or presentations as part of your life - and many of us do - something like this will probably pay for the whole kit fairly quickly. The ability to give presentations without fumbling with notes, the ability to walk around while talking and not be stuck behind a lectern, the ability to change slides with perhaps just a subtle nod of the head, make for very much more fluid and effective communication.
If I was still teaching regularly, I would buy one.
He got into these problems with revenue matching because he is running his business on cash basis accounting. In general only very small businesses can be run on cash basis accounting almost all manufacturing oriented businesses use accrual accounting. With accrual accounting you would book the Kickstarter money as a customer deposit and then recognize it as income when the product ships.
When I use the internet from home, my little dish lights up the satellite so effectively that not only can the satellite distinguish it from all the other radio frequency clutter emanating from northern Europe, I can push 6Mb/s up the link. Yes, I know you city folk think that's absurdly slow, but I find it mind boggling. What's even more mind-boggling is that it only eats 38 watts to do that. Of course if everyone was trying to light up the satellite at the same time it almost certainly wouldn't be able to discriminate all the different signals, but even so comms satellites are awesome technology.
Nonehteless I am betting such light would be forbbidden in many country in europe where the maximum intensity you can pump is limited by law.
BMW being a European company will take those limits into account in their production vehicles, don't worry.
The problem is that the legal limit is (in the UK at least) 60 watts. As there lasers will emit many more lumens per watt than the incandescent bulbs in use when the law was written, this doesn't stop them being much too bright.
Do they also detect pedestrians and cyclists?
Strongly agree. The problem is (in the UK at least) the limit to legal brightness is set in watts; it needs to be set in lumens.
Not just 6 digit IDs.
I've just had a look at the beta, and it's a bit bizarre. Pointless huge images. Lot more redundant white-space. No comment links. UIDs are not shown. The comment posting box is missing "Post anonymously". There doesn't seem to be any benefit to the redesign. It very much smacks of change merely for the sake of change, which is not good.
Writing code is easy. Ridiculously easy.
Um, right. It's so ridiculously easy that after decades of it, doing it even reasonably well is still a sought after and well-compensated skill.
It's so ridiculously easy that people keep proposing these "teach everybody to code" things, and they don't work.
It must be the Illuminati who keep it from working. Or those wascally wepubwicans.
Riding a bike is ridiculously easy, and most ten year olds can do it; but if you do it well enough to win the Tour de France you make a lot of money.
People who dedicate themselves by long practice and careful study to any skill - even a 'ridiculously easy' one - become good at it, and if it's a valued skill, the good people are more valued. It remains a fact that the average ten year old can easily write programs which will give them enough positive feedback and sense of mastery that, with encouragement, they may put in the practice and study which will one day make them well compensated.
And let's face it, a lot more people make a lot of money from writing code than from riding bicycles.
Well, give a shit. The only thing, in a globalised world, which keeps America and Europe richer than Asia and Africa, is that up until recently we've been better educated and technically more competent. That's no longer true. If you want your country to be rich enough to pay your pension in your old age, we've got to stay better educated - at least in the technical and engineering areas which increasingly drive the world economy.
...Keen to try new stuff, eager to experiment. Now it's all newbie wannabes who want something reliable, safe and unchanging.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
