I think the mostly likely reason we don't see evidence for intelligent life in the universe is simply because we don't realize how unlikely it is to evolve intelligence.
Maybe there are a lot more evolutionary paths life can take on a world than just something similar to what happened here on Earth. Maybe typically it's unlikely for life to evolve to become much more than plant-like life forms.
I'm sure there are species in the universe which have evolved intelligence but I think they're much rarer than we would assume here on our perfect example world, Earth.
Thanks for this. I've noticed I'm a very status driven individual and consequently I find the journey to be often a hard thing to appreciate. I also know I'm always extremely discontented by what I have and I question whether I will ever find that holy grail of success I'm looking for where I will stop worrying about all of this and just accept I made it.
I think the only answer is to force myself to focus more on my journey. Try to enjoy the highs and lows as they come. My friend has rather good philosophy on this where he defines his personal success by the action he takes and not by the amount of money he makes or some other external measurement he doesn't have total control over.
I think you have to hang in there if this is what you really want. Perseverance is a key factor and from what I see you have it( you did it for 6 years ). Money is a measurement of success (it shows that you have made something people want and are willing to pay for), it is not the only measurement, your service could be free and still be valuable to others.
I'm currently looking for a house in the UK so I gave this a go. I found the interface incredible buggy.
The search tools didn't work correctly, adjusting the price either made no difference to the properties shown or just came up with an error, "Ad detail is not available at this zoom level."
The photo only thing doesn't seem to do anything.
When navigating around my city every I would have to wait for the search results to repopulate which only took a second but was very annoying.
"Ad detail is not available at this zoom level" is not an error, it means you have to zoom in to see all the properties because there are too many properties at that zoom level.
When you click on a photo, shouldn't it be zoomed in ? I am surprised that the price filter doesn't work. Could you tell me which city you were looking at ?
It would be brilliant if you could now extend the simple interface to some additional features like cropping, rotating, maybe even some photo filters. I'd definitely use it.
Personally I question whether Microsoft's main reason for enabling DNT is to protect their user's privacy.
If Microsoft can look like the good guys while sticking a knife in Google's back, preventing them tracking users and targeting ads, then they might as well go for it.
IE on it's own won't do much damage but other browsers will be under pressure now to also add DNT, after all, they don't want their users to think they're privacy online is safer in IE's hands.
If all browsers slowly make this move Google could be affected quite badly. And that is the logic I think Microsoft is using here.
The problem is that the spec of the DNT header says that the DNT header can only be sent in response to a conscious decision on the users part. By turning this on by default, the only thing MS accomplishes is that DNT will likely never have an effect for IE10 users.
Which could also be exactly what they wanted: Get the good press for enabling the header by default while ensuring that they and everybody else will be able to track IE10 users normally, regardless of the setting being enabled or not.
Maybe but I hope Google would take the higher moral ground and assume the user has consciously decided to enable it as they have no way to tell otherwise.
It would look a little bad if Google just straight up ignored the DNT header on IE10.
This would singlehandedly kill 10-20% of Google's profits. Microsoft is playing a smart game, now that they have accepted that they cant beat Google in search/web-ads.
Right, because following Microsoft's defaults always leads to the high moral ground...
Please, Microsoft is doing this for the same reason its pouring billions in competing with Bing - so it can strangle their competitors revenue streams.
I don't know who at MS thinks this is a smart idea. If DNT gains widespread use, it will pretty much hand the entire US display ad market over to Google.
In terms of revenue per impression, revenue/behavioral tends to beat out contextual. After contextual you've got site targeting and run of network, in that order. Google is the only one that does a really good job on contextual, that I've seen.
As of last month IE market share is now down to 16.4% (w3schools.) What IE does won't be so important because soon no one will be using it anyways.
I wouldn't be too concerned about Google's profits personally. Look at how they got around iOS Safari's blocking of third party cookies(and are paying a fine for it). They'll find some way to do it. Also, DNT does not apply when the user is logged in.
When you create an MVP you shouldn't be thinking about the products success in terms of it's sales. An MVP is basically an experiment, you should be looking at feedback you're getting from it and how that feedback can be used to improve the product.
Do people like the product's goal but not a certain aspect of it? Great! Now go change that aspect and see what they think now. Repeat and repeat until the product is financial success.
If you're not getting sales that's fine, focus on just getting people more people to try a free account. Maybe change the homepage around one day, see how that affects the rate of sign ups. Keep experimenting and improving.
I'm dyslexic, I hate reading. I've always taken the attitude of 'just do it' and 'learn from mistakes' but a couple of weeks ago I decide I will start reading at least a book a month.
After reading the Lean Startup I feel like I've learnt more about building Startups than what I have reading various startup related articles on HN all year.
I'm sure this isn't the case with all books but I wouldn't agree that it's better just to go out there and try to do stuff you don't really understand. You'll probably just be wasting your time in most cases.
Maybe there are a lot more evolutionary paths life can take on a world than just something similar to what happened here on Earth. Maybe typically it's unlikely for life to evolve to become much more than plant-like life forms.
I'm sure there are species in the universe which have evolved intelligence but I think they're much rarer than we would assume here on our perfect example world, Earth.