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Comment by unalone | Hacker News Reader

Ted's an asshole, and most of the time I'm pissed off by his writing. When Uncov came "back" early last year it was terrible. That said, this article I agreed with entirely, all respect to raganwald, and it pisses me off that people would stoop to namecalling rather than discussing it. I think this is the rare Dziuba piece worth a good debate.

Above all, I can't stand insulting somebody by insulting the work they've done. Ted is obviously smart, he put a lot of work into Pressflip before retiring to have a kid, and Pressflip, while not brilliant, wasn't terrible when I used it. I just didn't see the point to it. Now he's off working on new things, so he's not exactly lazy or coasting.

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Any insults that Ted Dziuba receives are well-deserved.

He's written dozens of trollish articles on how useless other startups are or how he hopes they'll fail. It seems fair to me that people are insulting his failure to produce a successful startup when he's spent so long being a hypocrite. You can't expect to be the Glenn Beck of startups and not be on the receiving end of the trolling.

Here are some of his headlines from Uncov, incase you've forgotten his work:

    "Fanboy Driven Development with Arc"
    "Paul Graham, Just Shut Your Face Already"
    "RockYou Dominates The Fake Business World"
    "Surprise, Mahalo Still Blows"
    "Mahalo Is Hawaiian for Useless"
    "Guy Kawasaki Should Stick To Contentless Blog Posts"
    "Web 2.0: So easy a 14 year old can do it"
    "Middio: Another Marginally Useful Feature As A Product"
    "WriteWith: Everybody Point and Laugh"
    "YouOS: YouHave To Be Kidding Me"
    "Wellsphere's Fail Tale, Part 2"
    "Firefox Fanboys: The Only People More Dangerous and Less Competent Than ..."
    "Did Enron Cause Web 2.0?"
    "Web 2.0 Amateur Hour: Sputtr"
    "VoSnap: An Overnight Delivery Of Fail"

http://www.reddit.com/domain/uncov.com

I actually liked all of those articles, except the Paul Graham one, which was part of later Uncov. Back in the day, Ted had the knack for saying exactly what needed to be said about a lot of ego-laden fellows. He's more a critic than he is a builder; I'm one of those weird fellows that thinks a critic is a valuable part of any ecology.

I'm fine with negativity as long as you're saying something useful. The OP just snarked without any meaningful criticism; I attempted to criticize him and got downvoted to the depths of Hades, which I guess is how it goes sometime. For all his numerous failings, I still like Dziuba more than I dislike him, especially when he insults somebody along with a well-delivered counterpoint rather than just insulting.

http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/01/28/lets-all-grow-up/

> Above all, I can't stand insulting somebody by insulting the work they've done.

1 comment previous:

> But I don't blame you for needing to snark at other people after seeing adamhowell.org.

"Above all" is kind of a relative term for you, huh?

I worked at Google, too, so I wouldn't go around your whole life using that distinction as your measuring stick for smart people. "Any club that would have me for a member" and all that.

You see, the fact that I took your exact line and modified it to mention your web site instead of his web site ought to have ticked you off that perhaps I was trying to point out how immature your post was.

I worked at Google, too, so I wouldn't go around your whole life using that distinction as your measuring stick for smart people. "Any club that would have me for a member" and all that.

I know. It says so on your web site. It also says you founded JotSpot, an unoriginal wiki concept, and that Google bought you to make Google Sites, which is one of Google's failed services.

I'm sure that you're bright and motivated and very very capable. My point isn't that you're any sort of failure. My point is that neither is Ted.

I liked the article, so no worries if you do as well. And as others have pointed out, I'm (a) old, (b) have two kids of my own., and most importantly (c) just spent my Saturday morning racing a bicycle rather than learning Haskell or solving a Project Euler problem. I suspect I'd like Ted if we ever met ff.

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