IBM will be king for a long time to come. Just because a few rogue techno-mavericks are starting to use these little "personal computers" doesn't mean anything. They have no effect on nor relevance to the rest of society. A dinky little machine is good for people who aren't serious and who just want a toy. You can't get work done on a little toy. Mainframes will always be the way real, serious, moneymaking business is done. After all, look at how much money is put into the mainframe market today. Do you see any self-respecting professional who doesn't pay attention to the mainframe market? It's obvious that "PCs" are for amateur hobbyist techno-mavericks who have nothing better to do with their free time than waste it.
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While Mac may not win in the long run, Windows sure as hell is on the way to the land of nostalgia. It'll still be around, and people will still use it and depend on it, but they won't like it -- just like COBOL. I'd be pretty unhappy if my checks stopped clearing because all the COBOL programmers maintaining IBM 360s suddenly vanished.
You noticed that too? :) It was only meant as a rant, but it ended up getting several thousand views. Not sure why. I still think the core argument is valid, if you can ignore my ramblings about rubber chickens and Larry Ellison. ;)
"id Software has set up a second development team - and its first project is likely to raise some eyebrows.
"That group has begun by working on a web-browser-based version of the developer's popular Quake 3 Arena first-person shooter, Quake Zero, which will be funded by advertising."
I took this to be the general "emperor has no clothes" (perhaps contrarian is a better phrase) thread, but if this is supposed to be the Microsoft-isn't-dead thread, then I'll delete my comment.
It seems the entire argument could be summed up as follows:
PG focuses simply on product development I focus on product development with obvious monetization, which for some reason I call 'marketing.' If you have a product which cannot obviously be monetizatized, you should not quit your day job. Therefore, PG is 'hurting the children' by encouraging people to spend time developing products which may not be easily monetized.
An even more concise summary:
Don't put any effort into anything unless you are sure you can make money off of it. Altruism is stupid. PG believes in altruistic behavior, therefore he is stupid.
Altruism is stupid. PG believes in altruistic behavior, therefore he is stupid.
Not sure you've come to the correct conclusion in your analysis.
Graham has defined YC as "a hack to make money". Elsewhere in YC's site (it used to be on the FAQ) it talks about being benevolent, but "not a charity".
So, yes, any investor is looking to make a profit.
And so, you do need to think about whether or not your product can be profitable (even YC's application asks this question).
'Profit' is usually defined as pecuniary benefit. PG has stated elsewhere that he is not particularly concerned about this.
In my charitable estimation, PG's "Not a charity" statement means that YC is not in the business of giving out financial handouts. It does not mean that PG's first or only motive is pecuniary benefit.
We live in a culture defined by the worship of the Almighty dollar. If PG is at least hinting in a different direction, I'd say that's a good thing.
Our main priority at this stage is not to make the most money possible, but to show hackers that starting startups works. The best way to do that is by example.
We're hoping that 5 or 10 years from now, it will be a normal thing for the most ambitious hackers to start startups instead of going to work for big companies. We think that will make hackerdom as a whole dramatically more productive.
If that comes to pass and we were among the leading agents of the change, it seems reasonable that we might make a lot of money from it. But we don't have any idea how much.
In the short term we have to make at least enough to cover our expenses, because otherwise we'd run out of money and have to stop doing this.
Just to clarify, I was not criticizing Graham in general. I was only calling him out on his "Microsoft is Dead" article. The grand majority of his work is excellent (which is why "Microsoft is Dead" stood out so much).
To be perfectly frank I think he has a point. Paul Graham has some great things to say and he is certainly not braindead. But on this one I think he is dead wrong.
Yes, but it seems from discussion here earlier news.yc user accounts are reviewed as part of the YC application process (this has been mentioned before).
As such, even though PG would never penalize users for upvoting critical articles, I'm guessing there are some users that are paranoid anyways and playing it safe.
Guess I should come and defend myself just in case I ever want to come to the west coast. :)
First off, the title is obviously not meant to indicate that Paul Graham is, in fact, braindead. In reality, I respect Paul immensely, and it was for this fact that I felt strongly enough that I had to comment. As for the title, I was simply matching one sensationalist title with another. (Note that the title of neither article was actually representative of its real argument.)
Secondly, although many wish it (sometimes myself included), Microsoft is not dead nor dying. My core argument is that if Paul wanted to say that entrepreneurs shouldn't fear Microsoft, then so be it; his point would have been much stronger and well-stated. I also would have agreed with him... no one should be afraid of Microsoft, they're just a company.
Instead, he said things like "no one uses Windows" and "everyone can see the desktop is over" and completely undermined his own credibility.
Anyhow, as I said in another comment, it was just meant as a rant, and I'm surprised the post has gotten as much interest as it has. I still stand by what I said, but I probably could have toned down the sensationalism a bit. :)
Thanks for visiting and commenting; it's very good to get the opposing view. I wish you could have read the 30-odd comments that were left, most in agreement, before I switched back to Wordpress and nuked them... :/
I think you should defend yourself becuase you are NOT on the west coast. PG patrols the east coast with a mean machete, lopping off the heads of all that offend.
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While Mac may not win in the long run, Windows sure as hell is on the way to the land of nostalgia. It'll still be around, and people will still use it and depend on it, but they won't like it -- just like COBOL. I'd be pretty unhappy if my checks stopped clearing because all the COBOL programmers maintaining IBM 360s suddenly vanished.