"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China."
A lot of people fail to realize during these "I've been there and asked around" situations is that there is a fear or reprisal, especially in regimes that prosecute dissident views, and especially in those persons you ask don't know/trust you.
How do the people know who you are and whether you have ties to the government to confide in you?
They know they and their families can be sent to jail and persecuted just for stating an opinion. What's the benefit of telling you about their beliefs? The downside is quite obvious.
Don't take for granted these "I've asked them and they said it's fine" encounters.
Put yourself in your shoes, living in that regime. Would you confide in someone looking like a traveller/stranger in such a regime?
I don't get the nobleness. If he wanted to donate to charity, why didn't he do so with his own money?
He basically took other people's money from an honor system, intended for solely different purpose and decided to donate that. How is that noble?
He just decided this honor system is not to his liking and decided to screw it up. That makes ou an a*hole.
After all this time, not realizing his own douchebaggery just makes him look like a pretentious douche bag. The worst kind.
That's why it's called an honor system. It's based on trust. Not on any guarantee that it can't be circumvented. Of course it can. But if you do, I fail to see how that wouldn't make you an a*hole.
Oh man, I've tried numerous time to buy something using Steam and was never able. If you have a card issued in a country and you are traveling abroad, good luck making a purchase. Even if you change the billing address registered with the credit card to the same country you're traveling to and making a purchase from, it won't go through.
I would not give Steam as an example of a successful payment system implementation.
This sounds more like social engineering to me. My first thought was this was a hacker who took control of an email address from the security firm, and just tried to exploit the weakest link in order to get plaintext passwords.
I think you need to act on this, rather than just keep making promises. I also believe you would have helped already if you really wanted to.
You're essentially asking her right now to be a beggar, and putting her into an even more degrading position. What do you expect her to do? Write you that she needs $1000 for a new laptop, $100 for a new door, $50 for new locks?
Put yourself in her shoes. Doubt you would do that.
EDIT:
Also, you can't have it both ways. If you state you're going to help her, then help her. Otherwise just state it's out of AirBnbs' reach, and the hosts should have insurance and pay carefull consideration to who they rent.
Another problem that Android has is with the availability of the Market. Right now there are not many countries where you can purchase apps. Which is irritating for a lot of users who buy these phones, only to find out that they cannot purchase apps. So most try to find free apps. Some root their phones and pirate them.
Agree. While it's great to have a demo available if it pops up in a conversation, power pitching can be annoying. Especially if it's done by somebody who exhibits the traits of poor salesmen.
It's also about creating new markets. Identifying something along the way and taking your business in a different direction. There are successful businesses today started out as something else, and evolved in time.
This continuous change of the landscape might work very well for the guy who's behind the competition and doesn't make all the money yet. Those that make the money are usually reluctant to experiment with new paths. They usually fear risking what they've got.
It's basically so unpredictable and things evolve so fast right now, that it's a wild guess what you, or you competition could look like in 2 years.
The point seems to be that it doesn't do all the things that the author wants it to do. And, it doesn't have to.
Anybody who knows what his talking about is not saying that computers are dead, and that tablets are the way forward. In the same way, nobody is complaining that smartphones are crap because it's hard to create content on them.
Obviously the use cases are different.
Now would somebody who mostly consumes content ditch the computer for a tablet? Possibly.
Would somebody who creates content ditch the computer for a tablet or smartphone? Doubt it.
At the same time, this is not a zero sum game. People can own a computer and tablet.
I would say buying their oil has more of an influence, rather than owning a .ly domain. The earning for the domains are probably insignificant compared to the oil.
I think Joel and Jeff touched on the issues discussed in the article in their podcasts.
And Jeff always proclaimed that the purpose of the site is a very pragmatic one. To be a source of help for the specific professional community. Not a place to meet your buddies and hang out.
And there's a place for both. Personally, I like that StackOverflow stays away from too much social interaction and focuses on providing valuable technical content.
He was referring to the fact that once you've made significant investments in a platform + applications + DRM content, it's not really straightforward to move to another platform, especially because you cannot transfer the content you already paid for.
Also let's not forget about early termination fees from carriers, or getting another subscription just to get another phone.
For some people moving to another platform can be a significant expense. And for most people it's not really clear what else you might be missing on the other platform, that you were accustomed to using now.
Maybe it's part of their long term strategy. For now just require validation of fake sounding names. But as soon as you have critical mass, roll out the requirement for everybody to validate their names with valid IDs in order to continue using the system. That would make sense for the current state or requiring IDs for fake names.
Then they can go to advertisers or just blatantly sell the data if it doesn't work out.
Regardless if their intentions are good or bad, this data in the wrong hands can cause nuisance.
A lot of people fail to realize during these "I've been there and asked around" situations is that there is a fear or reprisal, especially in regimes that prosecute dissident views, and especially in those persons you ask don't know/trust you.
How do the people know who you are and whether you have ties to the government to confide in you? They know they and their families can be sent to jail and persecuted just for stating an opinion. What's the benefit of telling you about their beliefs? The downside is quite obvious.
Don't take for granted these "I've asked them and they said it's fine" encounters.
Put yourself in your shoes, living in that regime. Would you confide in someone looking like a traveller/stranger in such a regime?