Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows

What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash.

Lose all round, then.

Hate to say it, Sebastian, but this whole comment seems built on the back of a false dichotomy. You don't either berate your kids and force them to toil for years at something they hate OR they turn into listless, lifeless middle managers who just fart along. Plus, you're completely ignoring survivorship bias (in some cases literally): for every Andre Agassi, there are probably thousands of parents who told their kids they'd be #1 at tennis...and none were. You think those kids have now achieved self-actualization? Not to mention the fact that lots of people who ARE #1 haven't achieved any kind of "self-actualization" either, and are completely miserable people inside.

On this topic, I intend to teach my kids the three things my father told me over and over and over as a kid:

  1. A job worth doing is a job worth doing well.
  2. Winners concentrate on winning. Losers concentrate on getting by.
  3. You can do anything you set your mind to.

If they want to use that to become #1 in the world at tennis or #347 at being a middle manager in a warehouse in Nevada, that's great. Life isn't about being #1 in the world or being a celebrity or marrying another celebrity. It's being secure in who you are and the choices you've made.

Here's to all the middle managers in Nevada who love their jobs :)

I was raised like this. My mom showed me no real love, nor did my family. I buckled under the pressure and when the time came for any real emotional support, they abandoned me in an attempt to get me to "try harder." I never forgave them and I don't talk to them any more.

In the end, regardless of how they felt or their intentions, I was made out to be nothing more than an ornament, a product for the glory of the family name.

I get the impression you were not on the receiving end of this sort of treatment, and I mean the real receiving end. The constant drumbeat of criticism, the cutting remarks, the dread of never living up to the horizon of expectation, never catching it.

I hate my family for what they did, and frankly, I hate you for advocating it, for encouraging a parent to make some other child's life miserable beyond imagining so you can placate your ideal about overachieving.

I am a real god damned human being. I am not "just one of those cases" that didn't work out.

PS: The real shit-kicker is that eventually I did get it together on my own terms, with just OK grades by even my own standards and graduated from some out-of-state land grant university. Some of those other kids who got straight As or whatever, some whom went to Cal or Stanford, whom spent their youth jumping through hoops for their parents' affections, work at the same place I do, writing shitty enterprise code.

37signals is at their worst when they adopt this sanctimonious attitude. Say what you want about their juvenile tone, the criticisms on RTFHIG are mostly valid.

What are we going to do next? Pillory literary, film and food critics because their insights are inconvenient to the sensitive feelings of creators in those realms? Come on.

Creating things for other people has a long, rich history of criticism. Some valid, some bullshit, but all essential to the advancement of whatever creative field is under scrutiny. The shovelware artists who RTFHIG pick on might find a genuine direction for improving their work. Meanwhile, we're all talking about what genuinely makes a good interface.

That these guys are provocative makes their insights more valuable, since they get more attention. If you don't have or can't grow a thick skin, you don't belong in a creative field. It's as simple as that.