MoreMoschops

Hit the streets around Silicon roundabout. Find their blogs, get yourself invited to the Friday pub trips (or just turn up and get talking; if you've got what it takes to start and run a business successfully, that won't be a problem for you).

http://www.economist.com/node/17581635?story_id=17581635&...

"I hope you find a solution to your problems, it's not fair if you work really hard at something and get nothing back for your effort."

That implies I could spend a year writing a million godawful poems and it would be unfair not to pay me for them.

What doesn't count as a startup? Bill Gates is still living off his.

Piracy drives innovation and better ways of delivering content to customers.

I want to pay a fair price to watch a single episode of something once, at my convenience. I do not want to buy an overpriced DVD boxed set that I will watch one episode from and then have it taking up space on my shelves, knowing I'll never use it but struggling to throw it away because I paid so much for it.

It is now possible for me to pay a reasonable price online to watch a single episode of something, so I do. I get what I want, the vendor gets some money where before they would have got nothing from me. Everyone wins.

I honestly believe that if the studios had things exactly their way, I'd have to pay a fortune for something I didn't really want. They've been forced into this by having to compete with piracy.

If you want to talk about tech only in the Western world, that's great. Stating that the West "is really the only part of the world where we can meaningfully talk about technology" is just nonsense, though. Technology can be applied everywhere. The laws of physics don't magically stop outside the Western world.

This also requires a functional computer, a steady power supply for it, and an internet connection reliable enough and fast enough to handle it. In large portions of the globe, this is laughable.

A telephone needs a couple of wires and can be powered remotely (those of you who still have basic landlines will recall that they often keep working when the power to your house is out), and is a fantastically simple technology to repair and maintain.

In some parts, mobile phones (AKA cellular phones, AKA handy phones) are leapfrogging landlines because they require even less physical hardware and maintenance - it's not the case that everyone has one; rather, someone has one and sells use of it. People use it to make voice calls.

Such nonsense. Horrifically US-centric in dealing with a global technology, and ignoring that tone of voice carries so much information in a conversation that simply cannot be expressed well in the written word (despite the heroic attempts of some people to stick smiley faces everywhere).

"Reading this thread, it occurs to me once again how countercultural the Sermon on the Mount is, and how hard it is to seriously live it."

On the other hand, the reward (if you believe it) is eternal paradise of some kind. Infinite good in exchange for some finite pain. Yay religion.

The off-topic HN posts are getting silly. This isn't coding, or business, or some kind of cool interesting hack. It's not even interesting and could be summed up in a few words instead of a long, rambling .... ah, fuck it, HN is over anyway.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'll rephrase.

That is so not true. Don't extrapolate your own pitiful lack of morality onto others. If you have to explicitly remind yourself not to sexually assault people, it doesn't mean everyone else does too.

Is that better?

" Definitely the only thing that keeps people back from sexual assault is consciously deciding not to."

That is so not true. Don't extrapolate your own pitiful lack of morality onto others. If you have to explicitly remind yourself not to rape people, it doesn't mean everyone else does too.

"I'll probably get downvoted for asking, but I'm curious, would everyone be as upset over this had it been a drunken female guest inappropriately grabbing a guy's package?"

Your analogy is flawed. It ignores a fundamental biological difference twixt men and women; that in general, men are bigger and significantly stronger (I won't look up the exact numbers, but a much larger proportion of a man's body is muscle).

Here's a more accurate analogy that carries with it the psychological overtones your analogy missed.

Imagine you are a man, at some party, and some big guy approaches. He's way bigger than you, maybe as much as a foot taller, and he's clearly much stronger. Even if he's not sporting his muscles visibly, it's clear. He's bigger than you, stronger than you, and ultimately if he wanted to force you to do something, the advantage would definitely be with him. He looks an you in such a way that it's clear he wants to have sex with you, and then forces a kiss upon you, and then rams his hands into your underwear.

You can struggle, but he's bigger and stronger and really your only option is to push free and go somewhere with other people who will protect you if he tries it again.

You'll be thinking about this for days, wondering what would have happened if there was nobody there to protect you. You'll probably feel weak and vulnerable and violated. You'll think of this every time you go to a party for the next year. Every party you go to that you should be able to enjoy, you'll be thinking about this; afraid that someone bigger and stronger might decide to sexually assault you. It's a fucking horrible way to live.

"you will have a hard time if you're a self-righteous prick"

So how come nobody has told those internet censor wankers that a joke's a joke, they've had their fun, and now it's time to get back in their box before they feel the back of your hand?

The HN title of this needs fixing - I think Kasparov is talking about innovation within the U.S. (although the article itself is maddeningly unclear, saying "thinks the U.S. has become complacent when it comes to innovation" but then seeming to push a worldwide brush that the "last technology that could be thought of as revolutionary, he says, was the Apple II"; I think he meant in the U.S. and this is just sloppy journalism).

You're spot on about mobile phones changing things; the first mobile phone network was in Japan, and the Nordic countries were second up. The revolutionary innovation, which Kasparov is talking about, was not within the U.S.

The combustion engine isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Vast areas of the earth have people who need to drive but no serious and reliable electrical distribution infrastructure. The sheer inherent reliability of petrol as a fuel - you can carry it, store it, put it in a bucket, leave it sealed up for a year, bake it (be careful doing this one!), freeze it and still rely on it - means we'll still be making combustion engines for a long time to come. Granted, people in advanced countries who will rarely travel outside the electrical distribution network can switch to electric cars, but even there, petrol engines will stick around as emergency vehicles.

You copied out two of the course descriptions and gave us the meaningless syllable "meh" as the sum total of your analysis. That's not insightful. It's not clever. It's not funny. My guess is that you think these are actually arts courses with the word "Mathematics" in the title. If you can't be bothered to actually write out your conclusion, please don't bother at all. Expecting us to guess what you mean is rude and unhelpful.

"It sounds like you chose to stop learning about cars after manufacturers stopped using carburetors."

Read what I said again. You'll find that actually all you can infer is that I have a car with carbs; there's no information there on how much I know about anything else.

I have an engine that I can directly fiddle with, using one hand to rev the engine whilst the other messes with the carbs. Most new cars (in developed Western economies) come with a big cover over the engine, forbidding the user to touch the internals. If you just want to drive within the lines, you get the latter. If you want to fiddle and play and experiment, you get the former. It's really not a problem for anyone.

That's over a hundred a day. Bollocks. This "study" has people in their mid thirties sending ten a day, which also seems ridiculous. Some of them, sure, but on average? Nonsense.

Open University courses. Whilst I can't speak for the rest of the syllabus, the postgrad maths is well-written and well-paced, with tutors available for help, a well-run discussion forum, optional extra residential weekends here and there, marked assignments at decent intervals, and the prospect of serious additional qualifications to show off in conversation.

Being mostly from the US, lots of you guys are religious, right? Does contributing to open source projects boost your chances of going to heaven?

When do I get my apology from Sally Phillips of Greenwich, London? :)

That's really not an essay.

I bet solving the Riemann would be pretty fulfilling.

C, c++, Obj-C at work (with a healthy mashing of bash scripting for the meta-work)

I might be interested in buying this if I could see the freaking hardware and software requirements of the phone. Even a list of phones that work with it would be a start.

Is this definitely a real product and not some kind of spoof? How can people be sure when they order them (as so many of you seem to have done) if you don't know the hardware and software requirements?

I browsed through half-a-dozen pages, including "How it works" and "Product Tour" looking for the phone hardware and software requirements. No sign of them. I am not going to buy something without this information, and you have not made it easy to find.

" In human cultures, we debate the morality of -- gasp! -- breastfeeding in public."

What of human cultures outside the U.S.?

So what happens when 20% of the population want, for example, anti-discrimination laws repealed? You will always be able to find enough idiots to reach 20% - hell, polls that say "Are you alive?" always manage a few percent in the "don't know" box. Look at dirt poor people voting against inheritance taxes. Some shiny media personality will always be able to garner 20%.

They're in my basement...