A prescient footnote • Hacker News Board

Re: A prescient footnote

#21

Post by francoisdevlin » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 6:57 PM UTC

tlholaday wrote: post #3

presidentender wrote: post #2

Suppose you've made such a prediction about a tech company. How do you act on it? You can buy stock, of course, but is there a more powerful action available?

Sell the stock of its competitors short.

What happens when the entire market segment balloons? APPL might beat out MSFT, but if everyone is more profitable, your short failed.

Re: A prescient footnote

#22

Post by lenni » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 6:58 PM UTC

patrickryan wrote: post #20

PG also made this statement in May 2009 (iPad released April 2010): What would be your dream setup? I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone... Source: http://paul.graham.usesthis.com

That's what he looks like? I don't know why I imagined PG to look a lot more like a bearded Unix-type ...?

Re: A prescient footnote

#23

Post by zackattack » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:04 PM UTC

francoisdevlin wrote: post #21

tlholaday wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell the stock of its competitors short.

What happens when the entire market segment balloons? APPL might beat out MSFT, but if everyone is more profitable, your short failed.

Are there publicly-available financial instruments that account for this?

Re: A prescient footnote

#24

Post by kul » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:09 PM UTC

I'm pretty sure PG bought a lot of Apple stock in 2001-2003

Re: A prescient footnote

#25

Post by grinich » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

patrickryan wrote: post #20

PG also made this statement in May 2009 (iPad released April 2010): What would be your dream setup? I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone... Source: http://paul.graham.usesthis.com

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.

- Alan Kay

Re: A prescient footnote

#26

Post by zackattack » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

vlad wrote: post #10

presidentender wrote: post #2

Suppose you've made such a prediction about a tech company. How do you act on it? You can buy stock, of course, but is there a more powerful action available?

If you knew a technology was going to take off, learning their programming language/API and becoming a well-known expert on it could pay great dividends. Additionally, you could work there to make contacts and learn even more. Finally, you could try to join their developer programs while they are still in beta. Note that unlike suggestions to purchase stock in the company, this advice applies to technology at private…

are humanized forms of indentured servitude legal anymore? for example, could you pay to send someone to the bignerdranch bootcamp to learn iphone dev, but then have some way of mitigating the risk that they don't then go ahead and auction their new skills, acquired at your expense, on the market?

Re: A prescient footnote

#27

Post by francoisdevlin » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:11 PM UTC

zackattack wrote: post #23

francoisdevlin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when the entire market segment balloons? APPL might beat out MSFT, but if everyone is more profitable, your short failed.

Are there publicly-available financial instruments that account for this?

A put order would work well for this, IIRC.

Re: A prescient footnote

#28

Post by cschep » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:17 PM UTC

gcheong wrote: post #17

CUViper wrote: post #6

Perhaps Apple reads pg, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Or maybe pg is really Steve Jobs.

mind-splosion.

Re: A prescient footnote

#29

Post by moxiemk1 » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:20 PM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #15

Very impressive. In 1994 (I think, I can't be sure of the date anymore), I wrote an article in MacWorld France where I said the combination of Apple's GUI with the Unix kernel had a promising future. I didn't know it would take another 10 years...

Something to that effect had been around for a while by then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX

Apple has a wealth of fascinating abandoned projects.

Re: A prescient footnote

#30

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 7:20 PM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #15

Very impressive. In 1994 (I think, I can't be sure of the date anymore), I wrote an article in MacWorld France where I said the combination of Apple's GUI with the Unix kernel had a promising future. I didn't know it would take another 10 years...

Actually, it's more or less NeXT's GUI with prettier bitmaps. It's just called MacOS.

Once back to Apple, Jobs could use some characteristic Mac stuff, like the menu bar on the top of the screen (disfunctional on multi-monitor or big-screen settings), the shelf went to the left, the dock went down, the recycler became a trashcan and the filesystem browser was renamed "Finder" ;-)

But it's NeXT to the core. Never wondered why so many important class names start with "NS"?