Yeah, sadly that happens sometimes. I revert to Google (with bang syntax) when I am looking for something programming related and want a lot of results from stackoverflow. However, DDG is definitely better at finding some things. I recently searched for gentoo+postgresql related stuff and got highly relevant results, which weren't in Google's SERP.
Why are you people downvoting his comment? He expressed his opinion and provided arguments. Granted, I don't agree with him, however, I am not going to downvote just because it says something I don't agree with. :)
As for Firefox OS, I am really excited, because more competition == lower prices and more to choose from. Hehehe!
Competition, especially enough competition to start affecting prices in any meaningful way, doesn't just happen because alternatives merely exist.
The alternatives need to be extremely compelling in order to draw users away from very well-established incumbents.
From what we've seen so far, it's very doubtful that Firefox OS is capable of doing this. In terms of functionality, it is far behind what other mobile OSes have offered for years. What's worse, what it does offer is already offered by its competitors. It also offers much less flexibility when it comes to how developers can build their apps. It doesn't really compete in terms of cost, as used Android and iOS devices are widely available at very reasonable prices, even in developing nations. Finally, the claims about it being more "open" are specious, at best.
It's very difficult to find anything compelling about it. Regardless of what criteria is considered, it just doesn't offer any advantages. Widespread uptake just does not happen when this is the case.
It could be argued that the alternative for the FirefoxOS devices that have been announced are Android devices with similar hardware, but running either outdated versions of Android or suffering the limitations of running a platform built for newer devices on a device with more limitations.
This is a similar position to the one Microsoft is taking with WP7 through the less expense carriers in the US, the speed and responsiveness of WP7 is put up against Android 2.3 on a low capability CPU and GPU. WP7 seems to have been designed to render the "tile" display fast on lower quality graphics hardware.
If Mozilla and partners are positioning these devices against entry level devices from companies like Motorola and ZTE in less developed countries they could do well.
Really? Are we going to accuse people who uphold fact-checking, our respective constitutions and general political debate as "politically correct"?
I haven't seen an argument why we shouldn't extend human rights to Muslims. And yes, what most people who talk about muslims committing more crimes on average (which is true, if you restrict it to the relative proportions and avoid any proper statistical analysis) are talking about is a violation of constitutional rights:
It's impossible to punish millions of people for the crimes of the few.
No, it's not. There is no tremendously productive part of society that generates 10,000% profit. There is a shrinking middle class paying welfare.
And no, people are not going to innovate anything if they are getting taken care of. Entrepreneurship thrives in unregulated environment, which France is obviously not. I mean...you can't even work legally more than 35 hours there, good God!
> And no, people are not going to innovate anything if they are getting taken care of.
HN is full of people who are effectively taken care of yet innovate. For example, many people here have great jobs that provide all they need, yet they are busily spending evenings and weekends working on their own innovate projects.
There are others here who have made enough on start ups to cash out, and never have to work again--and they are busy making new companies.
Very few people innovate because they need to have their material needs taken care of.
Profits are only generated in two situations: one, overregulated or rigged markets where competition can't drive prices down, or two, due to market demands that have not yet done long run corrections to push labor into certain high-demand industries.
The problem here is that there is no high-demand industry in need of labor. What is happening is, for the most part, the first (overregulation creating false markets) and if we are going to have that, you need to correct for the siphoning of money into the tiny class of business elites holding ownership of dividend shares in businesses with these margins.
Your two options are to deregulate a large portion of the economy, or tax the rich and give it to the poor. The former would be nice, but I can't imagine socialist-heavy France taking that approach. The problem is I think it might be too late for the former in the first place - the productivity siphon has been in effect for decades due to international manipulation of national law to favor big business that has concentrated wealth and resources too heavily, so even if you deregulated many industries the investment capital in competing with entrenched players in markets, even those with artificially inflated prices just isn't there. When you concentrate money that much, the few with the means have no reason to part with it and drive new innovation outside of the safe law-created false markets they can throw money in and expect money out (the most extreme example is to be a bank getting free money out of the US fed at 0%)
That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again
* 2/3 of your last wage for 1 year on unemployment, free health care
* After that expires you get your rent paid, free health care , and 400 euro per month for other expenses - indefinitely
On top of that everyone also gets free additional care when they are old / nursing home.
Also everyone gets a minimum pension once they reach 67 years of age.
Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in europe. it has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in europe. it is one of the few countries that still had growth in the years past / is not deeply in recession.
I liked living in Germany, they have a good work ethics, I really like their service at the bar/restaurant, they come back from the office sooner than the French (I think we have a cultural problem with that), and they know how to have fun, chilling with a beer in the sun, enjoying riversides, simple joys.
Germany is doing well, because of :
1. Germans working hard
2. Qualified immigrants from Eastern European countries(and other parts of the world as well). Their labour is cheaper, which in turn is like adrenalin to the economy. I'll let you figure out why.
1) That's actually factually wrong (check EU work statistics) and a little racist -- adopting the stereotype of Germans as working robots. Here's a pointer:
"According to a new research on working hours in countries of the European Union, Greeks work 42.2 hours per week. more than all other Europeans. The research was conducted by the National Statistical Service of Britain for the period April-June 2011. German people work 35.6 hours per week, French 38 hours, the British 36.3 hours, while the Irish only 35 hours. In addition, according to the same research, full-time workers in Greece and Austria are working more hours (43.7) than workers elsewhere in the EU" (from the Guardian).
2) Nope, they mostly got/get lots of unqualified immigrants. Not to mention that the integration of Eastern Germany post 1989 had an enormous cost that nearly toppled Germany's economy.
The cycle in Scandinavia seems to have played out rather differently. The social-democrats (at the time considerably more socialist than they are today) were mostly elected in the 1930s and '40s, when the countries were extremely unequal, with a lot of poor farmers and factory workers and a small aristocratic class. They implemented a sort of welfare-state capitalism, and the countries prospered after WW2, during a period of almost unbroken left-wing rule.
Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right and towards some expansion of free-market policies and privatization (Denmark's particular version is called "flexicurity").
> Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right
As far as I can tell, the Nordic countries had started to stagnate economically, with a lot of young people emigrating for better opportunities, hence people wanting to change things.
No. It's just what the civilised West (namely, Europe) calls "welfare state".
And it's very successful, when it's not fucked up by right wing politicians.
"Socialism" was what the old Eastern European countries had.
>That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again
Nope. The cycle is:
rich country with strong middle class --> social left politicians get less popular/elected neoliberals and right-wingers come --> poor country/fucked up middle class --> social left politicians are elected again.
The same way Reagan and Thatcher fucked up the American/UK economy and middle class, and the same way the economy did better under Clinton that under the republicans.
It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?
The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...
>It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?
Deadly serious:
"""Looking only at the core measure of economic performance – GDP growth – Thatcher's performance was slightly better than that of her predecessor, James Callaghan, but slightly worse than under Tony Blair, with average growth over her tenure standing at around 2.3% a year.
(...)
Perhaps the best look at what Thatcherism meant for British families comes from a series of measures calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which calculated household incomes after tax (and any income from benefits), and put them into monetary amounts relative to 2010-11 prices, stripping out the effects of inflation. These figures show families got richer. The median household – the household right in the middle, where half are richer, half are poorer – earned the equivalent of £270.74 a week in 1979. By 1990, this had increased by 26% to £341.58. But, as you would expect, these gains were nowhere near evenly distributed, and the poorest got the least. A family in the bottom 10% had a weekly income of £151.58 as Thatcher came into power. Eleven years later as she left Downing Street, the family had just £158.57 – a mere 4.6% more. The richest families – the top 10% – did far better, with their incomes increasing from the equivalent of £472.98 in 1979 to £694.83 in 1990.
(...)
Still, the poverty figures don't look good: the number of children in poverty almost doubled under Thatcher, from 1.7 million in 1979 to 3.3 million in 1990. Pensioner poverty in the same period increased too, from 3.1 million to 4.1 million. Those numbers rise still further if housing costs are factored in.
(...)
By the World Bank's measures, industry (including manufacturing) fell from contributing 40% of the UK's GDP in 1979 to just 34% in 1990 – and has since fallen more dramatically still to just under 22%. The consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly Wales and northern England, hard. Unemployment soared from 5.3% in 1979 – a level high enough for the Conservatives' "Labour isn't Working" poster to go down in the annals of great election adverts – to peak at 11.9% in 1984. In 1990, the year of Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than when her era began, at 6.9%."""
>The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...
I very much live in Europe. And it's only considered a "failed model" by neo-liberals and private interests that want to demolish it. The people are very much for it.
In fact, the countries in Europe that are the most successful financially and socially, from Germany to the Skandinavian countries, are the ones with the best welfare states.
Huh? Could you give an example of a country in which communism was established without a violent mass uprising? Here in Western Europe, we have had a few rather stable decades of people voting right and left as they please. Are you aware that there is a world of difference between Socialism and Communism?
Most European countries have a free market economy with some sort of social safety net (that's the socialism right there). Communism has a planned economy, something which is unheard of in Europe at the moment (with the possible exception of Belarus). Also, some countries with strong social safety nets are doing rather well at keeping unemployment at bay. Think of the famous German Kurzarbeitergeld, where the state replaces a part of the pay of workers that work less due to temporary economic circumstances, thus avoiding layoffs.
Sadly, there are too little VC's and angels in Europe. If you take a look at a startup map of Vienna (or most major cities), you are gonna cry. The biggest "startup" is dict.cc...yeah.
That's why I am considering moving to CA after I get my degree. Though I am not sure yet.
Agreed. The biggest problem is funding. I'm working for a startup right now that's (to overuse a phrase) killing it, but I cannot imagine us getting here without a large amount of capital to get off the ground.
We'd have been stuck in garages without the money to really hit the growth curve hard.
I'm a Canadian expat in the US, I cannot imagine starting any sort of capital-intensive venture in Canada just because the investment money does not exist.
If you're building something that doesn't require a lot of funding, by all means do it wherever makes you most happy. If you do need a substantial amount of money though, your options are limited.
This. It is a huge pain to raise money at the lower levels in Europe. That I know of, something like a convertible note does not exist, or at least hardly anyone would offer one. The process can also be much longer, even if you find someone interested in making an investment. The pattern for new European startups seems to be, get as far as you can without taking money and then find a way to get to the US to raise.
That is an odd conclusion. Vienna is a nice city, but even for European terms it is not exactly a hotbed of innovation and start ups. Try Berlin, London.
Fellow Austrian here. I was in your exact boat about 6 months ago. Startup "scene" in Vienna is sad. Immigrating into the US is hard so I looked at Berlin and London.
For now I'm living in London. I considered Berlin, but I think the English practice here is invaluable. My English was already quite good when I came here, but it's improved LOADS. Also there's much more going on in general (culturally, socially), and there's more and bigger startups here (e.g. compare HN Who's hiring / startup city rankings).
> If you take a look at a startup map of Vienna (or most major cities), you are gonna cry. The biggest "startup" is dict.cc...
Don't look at silly maps (URL?) that are pure fiction. dict.cc is a popular website, but not a classic startup (apparently no ambitions to commercialize) and 11 years old.
Recent highly successful startups from Vienna are e.g. Runtastic and 123people.
A reasonable number of bigger startups have come from Europe, though some later move to the US once they get particularly big and/or acquired. Some examples that come to mind: Skype, Spotify, Unity, Mojang, Opera.
