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Be Good

paulgraham.com

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Re: Be Good

#191

Post by maxwell »

marvin wrote: post #136
wumi wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was there any indication from Nintendo that they would come out with a market-leading console (after the disaster that was the GameCube) ?

Yes, there was. Or rather, there were indications that the Wii would get very popular. I was in the camp of "the Wii is definitely going to be successful", but the market at large obviously wasn't. From what I heard at the time, the Nintendo DS was very successful in "niche markets" (or "casual gamers", choose the label that suits you), which could be taken as an indication that the Wii, with its promised novel contr…

Nintendo has been the leader of the videogame hardware market continuously since the NES days. Though they lost the fifth- and sixth-generation console wars to Sony, their >90% share of the handheld market was enough to secure them as top manufacturer through the late 90s and early 00s.

Re: Be Good

#192

Post by anatoly »

andres wrote: post #154
DevinDawson wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to hear a much stronger case for Digi-Key having monopoly pricing power than just an assertion. Aren't the distributors market shares fairly fragmented (the assumption I'm operating on)? Digi-Key seems to have a large market share because it has built some kind of service reputation. I don't really understand the legal position of scraping (and I'd love to see an accessible semi-authoritative explanation of th…

In an earlier post, I pointed out some price discrepancies between the electronic parts industry and the consumer electronics industry ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168796 ). This is the evidence that I'm basing my assertion on. Incidentally, this comparison was not possible before Octopart. There is no difference between what Octopart is doing and what Google is doing. Both companies crawl the web and mine t…

Does Octopart honor robots.txt on Digi-Key's site as it crawls it?

Re: Be Good

#193

Post by gommm »

andreyf wrote: post #23
steveblgh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even YouTube/FaceBook/Flickr started along those lines. Hell, even Jimmy Wales was running a porn website ring before focusing on Wikipedia full time.

Since when is porn evil?

I think the problem here is that evil is relative. You might say that porn is evil and find a reasonable argument for it. And somebody else might not see porn as evil but just as something enjoyable that he likes. If this person creates a porn company, how can he and his company be considered evil if he genuinely can't see why porn would be considered evil?

Re: Be Good

#194

Post by andreyf »

yters wrote: post #103
yters wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way as drugs and alcohol are evil. They create addictions and harm the users. Sure, everything can be used in moderation, but are moderate users of these things the exception or the rule?

So you don't think men have a significant problem with pornography addiction, and/or viewing porn has bad effects on relationships between men and women? Despite it being a conservative claim, and consequently people don't like it, the breakdown of the family is a very big problem.

> the breakdown of the family is a very big problem.

Why assume that "the family" is perfect as it is? If the freedom to trade money for videos is detrimental to a social structure, to limit freedom to preserve a social structure seems regressive.

Re: Be Good

#195

Post by Kbaxter »

Mr. Graham,

Thanks for this piece. It's something that's been kicking around in my head since Nov. '06 or so when I discovered Newsvine. I found a community and community genuinely interested in promoting quality news discussion and content, AND in making money. There's something powerful happening now, with the profit-motive acting in a socially-beneficial way.

Your blurb about the malaria company inspired me to do a little thought exercise about whether it'd be possible for a for-profit company to successfully help pull people out of poverty, and what that company would look like. If you're interested in reading it, here is a link: http://www.tightwind.net/2008/04/mesh-networks-relationships... .

Thanks again for your great piece.

Re: Be Good

#196

Post by cjwang »

I was unaware of Octopart but after checking it out, it seems like an excellent service. I posted it on my blog so that others can check it out too.

I also agree with the concept of being good and idealistic programmers. My blog is basically a development journal to record my progress and thinking as I write an open source wireless (Zigbee) protocol stack. Many companies charge large amounts for these embedded stacks, but I figure that hobbyists should have access to the same things that large companies do. Only good ideas can come out of it.

If anyone is interested, you can check out my dev journal and blog here: http://www.freaklabs.org

Re: Be Good

#198

Post by atduskgreg »

Have you followed the rise of social entrepreneurship at all? Under its banner there are quite a lot of startups taking on problems exactly like the malaria dilemma you describe in the piece. They come at the issue from the opposite side of the spectrum: they're reacting to all of the waste and inefficiency in the old fashioned non-profit world, where something gets done because a millionaire's brother's wife is interested in it and done badly because she's not very good at solving the problem. So, they're trying to harness the power of market forces and the attendant efficiencies and motivations that go with them in order to solve these big intractable social problems. The social entrepreneurship movement encompasses everything from micro-finance -- which was pioneered by Mohammed Yunnus at Gramin Bank (for which Yunnus just won the nobel prize) -- to a revolution in funder logic and an increased focus on effectiveness metrics.

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on social entrepreneurship from a startup point of view.

Re: Be Good

#199

Post by austinchu »

Great article. I work for a startup company and these are exactly the issues that we go through. We're in the second phase of funding and it's always a tough time. Will we have enough money? Is there money? How will be get it? Where will we get it? How much do we need? All these question about money. What I got from the post is that we are here for a purpose. I totally agree with nostrademons post. Provide a great service and product, let the people be the judge. Let's get to work. We're not going down quietly.
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