ocirion

What happens when Dropbox is acquired?

Touché

Rather than the cause being something other than corruption, I think this is in addition to corruption. Without corruption all the way to the very core of the government (as it is in SA), we wouldn't have situations such as this. The lowest, cost effective tender would have been chosen after following proper due diligence. In this case the due diligence would mean asking experts (of which there are many in SA) which, combined with the cost of the project, would still have cost a fraction of the R140m.

But that's what Dustin is saying. If you're using the right tool or the right equipment, you won't focus on it. You won't worry about something breaking. You'll get to enjoy the experience. These quality 'things' don't improve the experience, they prevent other factors (such as a poor quality backpack breaking) ruining the experience.

You need a backpack to hike. You could hike without one but that would involve carrying everything in your hands. Backpacks are the evolution of ergonomic design to make carrying items on long journeys comfortable.

You need a towel if you travel. You could drip dry after each shower or decide not to at all but that introduces another set of hygenic and time-wasting problems.

You need utensils to eat. You could use your hands, again not paying attention to hygiene, or you could be civilized and use a knife and fork.

Researching and buying the best ensures you should only buy once. It's appreciating that someone, or group of people, have spent months, even years paying attention to every detail in designing something that serves an important purpose.

What you seem to be forgetting is if you spend the time researching and ensuring you're buying a quality pen or book or utensils. You're also ensuring you don't need to buy another one next week/month/year when the current one breaks or you realise its not suitable. That's also a bunch of wasted time saved. Whether or not it equates to the time you spend researching the quality item is probably debatable and likely related to the item itself.

I thought that was just Business Insider.

VB occasionally has a story worth reading. But usually they're just rehashing what everyone else had yesterday.

I have the same dream about CDs and DVDs.

>"tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher."

Has no one else picked up that the only reason Arrington responded was because Bilton very obviously was taking a stab at MA in his Techrunch days. Who else was proudly posting pics and tweets about MC Hammer at the TC after parties, or blasting TC headlines about Kutcher being at an event.

1 reason to develop for iOS first: revenue.

What happens when they fail one too many times and the seemingly endless supply of R&D money runs out?

Google has a huge revenue generating machine in search, and adwords. This allows them the opportunity to spend massive amounts of money on a lot of projects that will mostly fail. They're hoping, at some point, one or more of these projects will turn profitable. But they're burning millions doing it.

The problem with this approach is that they end up neglecting their core search product, which I don't think has evolved much in the past decade. If someone else comes along and disrupts search, its goodbye Google.