Kynlyn

Do you also lament the creation of things like the fore-runner of the Internet that was created by the military industrial complex? Or the countless other advancements we use every day that were driven by military R&D? Or are you just completely and totally unaware of the significant contributions that military R&D has made to civilian lives?

And there are countless forums to discuss such "important" issues. Just because a story has humanistic touch, that doesn't mean it belongs here.

...except he stated in the article that they work 8 hours a day...

The link is now a 404..I hope it wasn't powered by Meteor...

The fact that it's considered contrarian to advise people to start with building a profitable and sustainable business model is a sad testament to the "startup culture" that emphasizes hype over substance.

Oh stop it. Get over yourself, already.

I've run my own software business for over a decade now and I still have a boss. It's called The Free Market.

I can decide I'm above doing certain tasks, but my customers can also decide to go to my competition if my company isn't taking care of their needs. And sometimes my customers need things that I really don't feel like doing.

But I do them..because they are my customers; they pay the bills. They are the boss.

I think it's a worthwhile goal to attempt to achieve this in other companies, but it's also important to truly understand why this works so well at GitHub.

GitHub is largely developers writing software for other developers. An interesting problem to a GitHubber is just as likely to be something that their customers are interested in. GitHub is a classic example of dog-fooding. They use their own product and many of their employees used the product before they came to work there. A typical developer at Github is very likely to have the same vision (and passion!) for the product as the owners of GitHub.

If your product is software for a vertical that doesn't happen to be other developers then are going to be likely challenges. What is interesting to the developers very well might not be interesting to their customers.

"Even if they were, they have no right of condemning their children to such life"

So who does? You? Western society? Don't you find that thinking a bit arrogant?

Oh snaps...And I got suckered by this.

It might have been AutoData, but they have merged with Chrome. Edmunds has a decoder, but it's pretty laughable. I'm not aware of any other major players in that field outside of those.

Chrome offers 1-1 matches on VIN to style Ids for most OEM's, but it's an additional cost.

Trucks are certainly the most difficult to decode. But if you are using something like ChromeData for the VIN data, and combine that with the info from the dealer's site then you can usually narrow the vehicle down to a specific trim level.

Not always however. Dealers frequently have incorrect or missing information on their websites, so garbage-in, garbage out.

This is why scraping dealer websites for data is always going to be problematic. Far better to work with the providers to have them send you the data. It's faster, easier and you get far better data.

What about trim levels? Trim levels are crucial in the buying decision. For example, if you search for a Ford F-150 on your site, there is no way to see if it's an XLT, King Ranch, Raptor, etc. The price and equipment difference in those vehicles is huge.

What about options and equipment? Does the car have navigation? Sunroof? Most consumers have specific option packages in mind when searching for car online.

This is why VIN explosion is necessary for any serious automotive shopping site. If a consumer can't narrow the vehicles down to a trim and option package level then it won't get wide adoption.

Exactly. Anyone who takes a look at revenues in an industry that they know nothing about, then extrapolates that to some measure of profit is being fairly naive. He goes a step further and determines his domain is "worth it" based on his guess at the profits.

Of course, he has a great domain name and he is well within his rights to ask whatever he wants for it. But to imply it's affordable without having any factual data to back that up is a bit much.

And how so?

A Utopia? Perhaps you are setting the Utopian bar a bit too low?

There was very little, if any freedom of expression or freedom of speech. Not very utopian.

Average citizens had their exposure to the outside world limited. Not very utopian.

Citizens lived in a very tightly controlled society. A society controlled by the government and secret police. Not my idea of utopia.

Even if the modern internet had existed then, it's doubtful that a citizen would even be allowed to come to a site like this and even have this discussion.

As far as the Stasi go, you can't just say "without them it would have been fine" because they are completely intertwined with that society. That society required very little or no dissent to continue and that is why the Stasi existed: To crush dissent and keep everyone thinking how wonderful their "utopian" existence was....

I think Jamie Smyth should get over himself. I understand his point about it not being particularly fair to the developers, but guess what? It's a free market and if developers choose to spend their time working for free for Campbells then that is their business. All of his self-righteous posturing about developers "having the most sought-after skills in America" comes off as very oddly paternal. We're all adults and we can all make our own decisions about how we choose to spend our time. Nobody tricked or forced those developers to work for free.

How do you plan on advertising this? If I'm looking for a DJ, etc, I wouldn't consider or think of looking for a site like this. I'd just use Google or ask friends for a reference. The network effect is tough to overcome; you've got to have sufficient entertainers and sufficient people who know to look for entertainers. Is this really an area where there is sufficient pain?

I don't mean to be a killjoy; I've run a software business for over 10 years and learned a few things along the way and the key thing I've learned is that I have to be solving a very real problem and I just don't see that here.

Good luck to you, though.

Geesh, and all anyone else here is saying that his political beliefs on anything else aren't relevant to anyone who is genuinely interested in helping the cause that Aaron fought for. Cornyn, for whatever his agenda might be, is trying to help. And that isn't good enough for you because he's a Republican. And that is just pathetic partisanship.

You're blasting Corynyn because you don't agree with his politics. Fine. But that has absolutely nothing to do with anything here.

But if a Democrat were to have written the same letter, that would have been ok with you? Then he wouldn't have been "a clown"?

Here we have a Senator who is at least drawing attention to the situation, but that isn't welcome because he comes from the wrong side of the aisle?

I'm sure Cornyn is using this for political gain. Of course he is. But if you think there is anyone in Washington who isn't motivated by political gain then your being very naive.

Developers are a small percentage of the overall market. Sure, we might think it's cool because it's running Ubuntu. But the vast majority of the population is going to look at it and say "How is this going to make my mobile experience better in a way that I don't already have from IOS or Android?"

I wish Canonical luck, but I just don't see my non-technical friends caring one whit about this phone unless it does something extraordinary that they can't get elsewhere. And I just don't see that happening.

The graph, while interesting, is misleading. The data is based on laws mandating parental leave, not the ability for workers to take leave.

In the US, many private companies have liberal parental leave policies; it's not mandated by the government. But that doesn't mean US workers rank near the bottom.

I see you're point about America's economy being the most powerful, but isn't that perhaps a bit like a marathon runner who sprints full speed the first mile and says "Whoa! Look at how much I'm ahead of everyone else!".

You may be right, but it seems there is more than just our current situation to consider. There are long-term ramifications of that debt. At some point, we can't just keep borrowing. It might be working for us today, but like the sprinting marathon runner, eventually it will catch up to us.

Zimbabwe's war ended in the 70's. Horrific mismanagement by Mugabe and his cronies is the biggest culprit of the hyper-inflation now affecting the country.

Representative Bob Goodlatte was a proponent of relaxation of encryption controls; pushing for a law in 1999, only 6 years after assuming office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Goodlatte

Conrad Burns was a sponsor of the PROTECT Act which was an attempt to overhaul encryption regulations, including prohibiting domestic controls of encrypted software. He did this after being in office for about 8 years. http://www.techlawjournal.com/cong106/encrypt/19990414burns....

edit: Goodlatte was a Rep, not a Senator.

This is the kind of thing one can expect when their leaders are so far removed from the people that they govern. Joe Biden has been in office since 1973. I'd wager that's longer than many of the HN readers have even been alive. When you have politicians who have been running around in the Washington circles that long, some really bad things will come of it.

So, at the time he proposed that, he had been in Washington for nearly 20 years. Shouldn't surprise anyone that he was pushing an agenda for a larger, more powerful federal government.

Reverse "Europeans" with "Americans" and this post is equally good advice for Europeans who say "Oh Americans are...".

Stereotypes aren't just an American thing. They exist worldwide.

When I read articles like this, I always wonder if early-on there was someone in the room saying "Um..guys..maybe we should just pick something stable first?" and got shouted down as being a Luddite?

I've seen that countless times where exuberant "experts" hastily choose a new technology over the warnings of those who are a little more thoughtful in their technology choices. Usually the ignoring comes with a heavy dose of disdain and mocking of the person for not being "up to speed with the latest stuff".

Then when disaster strikes, they seem to have forgotten about how they were warned and write a blog post about how much smarter and more experienced they have now become.

Not suggesting that this the case here, but I have to wonder if Cloud9 didn't have at least one person saying "Whoa there sparky! Have anyone of you considered how we are ever going to query this stuff?", etc.

Wow, this made my day! As a 13 year old kid, I spent hours pouring over that very exact catalog, dreaming of all of the fun stuff I could do with those cool computers.

After playing on Model III and Model IV's and Commodore 64's and VIC-20's, my parents bought me a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1983. Just like the one in that catalog. 4k of RAM. 4K!

But that little TRS-80 changed my life; it introduced me to the joys of programming. Fast forward 30 years and I still love to program; have had a great career and have spent the past 10 years running a software company.

And it all started in the very same 1983 Radio Shack catalog. Thanks for sharing!

I'm pretty certain he isn't suggesting that. The context he is largely talking about is running a business where you are in charge. Not a woman talking a walk through the park one night...

I have no affiliation with Code School, but I saw that they recently offered a free course on R, which is a programming language built around statistics.