Jistern

>> Entry tickets, if handled properly, could be a great way to fix the issue.

I disagree.

This seems like a "great way" to damage the tourism industry in Venice. In other words, I think this is a terrible way to deal with tourists who are visiting Venice, yet aren't spending enough money in Venice.

I think it would be better to require every adult tourist to buy, say, €10 worth of "Venice Money" which they could spend at any restaurant or shop in Venice during the day they are visiting. Too many tourists? Then increase it to, say, €15. Too few tourists? Then decrease it to, say, €5.

Part of the goal is to require tourists to spend a minimum amount of money while visiting Venice. Charging an admission fee seems too heavy-handed. Sure, I realize that my suggestion is tantamount to an admission fee, but it's likely to be more palatable to tourists. The goal isn't merely to get tourists to spend a sufficient amount of money in Venice; part of the goal is to make tourists happy to do so.

Tourists are notoriously fickle. Furthermore, they have myriad places in and around Italy, Europe, and, well, the world where they can spend their money. The current problem of too many tourists could very quickly turn into a problem of a dearth of tourists.

"Killing the goose that lays the golden egg" would obviously be foolish. I presume the economy in Venice benefits immensely from tourism. This is precisely the sort of measure that people tend to look back at in hindsight and exclaim, "How could we have committed such a blunder! What were we thinking?!?"

Having opined all of that, sure, I can see why denizens of Venice would welcome a measure that would decrease the number of tourists generally, and particularly the number of skinflint tourists who visit Venice, yet don't spend a single euro in Venice.

Also, frankly, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Venice to enforce dress codes and behavior codes. For example, nobody wants an endless "parade" of motley dressed drunkards wandering around their neighborhood.

Personally I happily shop at Costco, but haven’t set foot in a Walmart in perhaps 20 years. I detest Walmart. Why? Part of the reason is this: Costco has a “greeter” standing at the enterance. Ostensibly the greeter’s job is to verify that people entering are members. In fact, that greeter is also eyeballing each person who enters and is empowered to deny enterance to people who don’t meet Costco’s minimum standards (which aren’t very high, but are still much, much higher than Walmart’s standards).

Similarly, one of the "secrets" to the success of Las Vegas strip is this: although they allow a lot of rowdy behavior, frankly, they actually keep a tight lid on things: a very, very, tight lid, which I presume you would have noticed if you’ve ever actually been there and paid attention.

It's a delicate balance which requires discretion bordering on sophisticated and subtle diplomacy.

For example, when dealing with "drunk idiots" the Las Vegas police tend to use kid gloves as much as possible. Why? The powers that be in Las Vegas want "visitors" (tourists) to tell their family, friends, and associates they had a great time on the Las Vegas strip. They also want most of the tourists themselves to return over, and over, and over again.

The same is true for a myriad of tourist destinations around the world.

>> fundamental problem is cargo cult developers trying to copy massive companies architectures as a startup. They fail to realize those companies only moved to microservices because they had no other option.

This.

Microservices add complexity; therefore, they should be avoided unless necessary. That's Engineering 101 folks.

Pro Tip: Buy a professional dental pick. I bought one on Amazon for around $35 about 10 years ago. I use it every day. It works great.

It’s 1997 and you want to build a website...

... just wait a decade or two; it will get much easier.

Seriously, I built a very simply static website around 1997 or 1998 with Adobe Page Mill. It was pretty easy.

Your reasoning is faulty and very probably self-serving. More and more companies can and will outsource their infrastructure. IT guys hate this because it threatens their "paychecks."

The optimal amount of cloud services for an established company like FedEx is 100%, not merely with a "disaster recovery plan" but with live, 99.99% redundancy by which I mean two almost exact systems running nearly simultaneously (within a second or two of one another) on two completely different networks.

FedEx enjoys almost all of its competitive advantage from its physical network. IT is not core to its business.

Here's the problem... almost no company actually does disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" properly because most C-level executives only pay lip service to it.

Therefore, the whole notion that disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" don't work is predicated on the false notion that companies actually have proper disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" in the first place.

Good point! I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah. I agree. I often tend confuse the terms "mirage" and "oasis" in my own mind. After all, they are both things one might perceive in a hot desert, although the first is not real; whereas, the second is real.

> Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature to their main product. Poof, everything somebody worked long and hard for disappears.

There's a lot of wisdom in the statement above, but you also have a point... which I think you went much too far with.

Basecamp is not a relationship; it's a brand, but it's much weaker than, say, Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc.

See, Basecamp was what all the kool kidz were using. And the Basecamp founders were soooo koooool! They even wrote a book! Oh yeah, and they used "the hot new technology" red choo-choo trains, er, uh, I mean Ruby on Rails.

Hey, if people can feel passionately about sugar-flavored water with bubbles in it, they can feel passionately about software... I guess.

Buuuuut the inherent problem is this: you can show off your Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc. to your friends and to the girls/women you want to impress.

Basecamp, not so much. Basecamp seems like a dying brand to me. I don't see why anyone would begin using Basecamp these days because it's waaaaay overpriced.

But for a 40 year old who started using it 18 years ago, sure, he might have enough money, nostalgia, and, well, laziness, to keep using it.

I doubt Basecamp has many users under the age of 30, and probably never will. And I doubt it has many new users. At the end of the day most software doesn't have a social aspect to it; these days I assume Basecamp essentially is seen as a commodity (like a pillow case) by most people, even those who use it. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are outliers which are extremely popular and have network effects.