Vandy_Travis

That is a very succinct summary, thank you for that.

I was actually asking about this from the opposite person's perspective. I didn't catch the "in sales" part -- did I just miss that, or am I missing a larger context of his theory? Having missed that piece of info, I was wondering what this theory says about my own motivations (I would categorize myself in the 3rd category, where I try to help my friends. But shouldn't I question my own motivations, given this outlook?)

I suppose it's reasonable to question one's own motivations pretty regularly, anyhow.

Interesting links. I'd never heard of Mr. Ringer, or his theory before this.

My simplistic understanding of his 3 types theory is this: "In summation, I realized that no matter how a guy came on, he would, in the final analysis, attempt to grab all of my chips (again with the one exception that I pointed out)." (The exception being the classic "win-win", where the other party benefits from my success, thus aligning incentives.)

My reaction to reading that was to think about myself. If the theory is correct, then regardless of my own intentions, I'm going to try to "grab all [his] chips". That actually makes his "Type Number One" guy the most honest and ethical.

I don't think I can quite reconcile my own ethics with that analysis, but I'm willing to consider it. It paints a somewhat bleak picture of business ethics.

How do you read his theory, if you put yourself in the shoes of the other party in the transaction, rather than his first person?

My roommate is a doctor, and I've been having some discussions on this topic lately.

The biggest concept is to use technology to support the existing dr's workflow. This can vary, a lot, between different types of doctors.

The thing he most often comments upon is the text replacement feature for his office's electronic records. He can type "issued XYZ medication due to past history of .HT." and the system will automatically insert the relevant heart history information (maybe a recent test reading, etc.) into the record.

Saves him time in recording info into the patient records. That seems to be his #1 desire for better tech -- saving time. And making complete entry into the medical records is a good place to work, as it solves a frustration that already exists.

It does a good job of being brief and describing what uberzet allows me to do.

However, it feels fairly sparse, and it doesn't tell me what uberzet is. Is it a web app? Is it a page for me that i can send other people to in order to search my public folder?

A little more work on the layout would make me feel better about giving login credentials to my dropbox.

Can you help me understand the contempt you have for the Zynga games? I don't play, myself, but I do understand that the games exploit (negative? compulsive?) psychology, and they've used unethical business strategies.

But who cares? After all, it's unlikely the next Vonnegut is going to spend his time playing MafiaWars instead of writing "Slaughterhouse Five" or anything.

I am reminded of the aphorism, "Time you've enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."

On the other hand, equity compensation in a startup is also based on the riskiness of the equity. Even if an employee is not that "valuable", they should still not have the original terms of their agreements altered.

[I agree with all the points above, but wanted to add in the fact that early employees are rewarded for risk as well as production. Esp if they signed on for below market salaries, with stock calculated as deferred compensation.]

From the Ars Technica article it sounds like this evidence was introduced in defense of Hotfile. You're most likely right -- hotfile doesn't have the resources to pursue this as a counterattack. However, it could be used as a successful defense in their current case, which could help establish it as part of case law.

"Hotfile has also tried to turn the tables by arguing that one of the studios, Warner Brothers, has itself violated the DMCA by issuing bogus takedown requests"

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/warner-admit...]

You could make sure that the requesting page is on your domain.

I 100% agree, when you're talking about the ads that are aired a hundred times a day on syndicated television. Then again, the shows are terrible, so I suppose it's fitting that the ads match.

However, what about Apple's 1984 ad? Or the BMW mini-movie advertisements they ran about 6 years ago?

There are some incredibly cool concept ads out there. They usually are not the ones broadcast, but if you watch the end of the year awards for the industry, there are some very creative minds working there. (And creating some impressive work).

You are right -- there are some neat aspects to this model.

However, it also tends to devalue the work invested by the analysts. They are doing the work for essentially a lottery ticket -- winner take all. That's the reason that it can be so cost effective to the company running the competition -- they don't absorb the costs of the failures (or less optimal approaches).

Those costs have to be absorbed by someone. In this model, they are eaten by the analysts, who (generally) don't have enough resources to cover those costs. Due to that, I don't think this model is sustainable or will really catch on.

OTOH, in some (ideal) academic endeavors, having multiple groups compete for more funding or for a prize has certainly benefitted the sciences. In that case, however, the competition was more friendly than zero sum. Also, I believe the different sides tend to share information more than hoard it, yielding lessons learned to the entire group from one team's failures.

One other use case is if you have significantly different weather conditions a short distance from one another. I live near the coastal mountains; a 20 minute drive could take me from nice and sunny to cold and rainy.

Your points about feedback are valid, however.

Does anyone think it could also be useful to tie a twitter feed in with weather information? I feel like weather is one of those things that ppl complain about on twitter all the time; some simple geolocation and keyword matching and you could pull up recent geolocated tweets near you. Could be a nice qualitative weather report to accompany the actual data (people like a personal face on the weather).

If you are really concerned about raising prices (I wouldn't be; I think you should raise them across the board), you could try just charging new clients/users the higher rate. Adds complexity to your system, however.

Edit - just saw the question. The problem right now is not that you don't have a partner; it's that you don't charge enough for the work you're doing. Adding a partner is going to create another set of distractions and issues.

One aspect of self service that I particularly like is the alignment of incentives. I'm incentivized to bag my groceries / deposit my checks quickly, because I want to get out of there. Employees (esp. in low end service jobs) are generally unconcerned with speed or quality, because they're making $6 / hr.

Much of the time I'd simply prefer to self-serve, because it's more pleasant and faster for myself. (Note that grocery checkers don't really fit this category in the States, because they tend to be fairly well paid.)

Agreed, 100%. I've actually bundled a Wordpress install with the necessary plugins and libs (google analytics, basic survey abilities, a/b testing harness). This makes it super easy for me to spin up an ec2 or linode instance. Then I can run a test and make a decision without touching any of my core products/sites/servers.

Not too difficult to do.

It'll be interesting to see how foreign laws (specifically, EU laws regarding privacy) affect taxes. Will future facebooks decide to not incorporate in the EU in order to avoid their (more) stringent privacy protection laws? If so, that could bring more revenue in to the U.S. treasury.

Make a hypothesis, let the market validate it. I would say if you're spending more than 1-2 months on designing, developing, and testing (on real cusotmers) your MVP, your cycle is probably too long.

I'm currently looking at a 6 week cycle for one "iteration".

It will depend on how difficult your product is, as well. There was a linked article on HN recently about how dropbox's MVP was too complex to build ahead of time, so they used a video demo as their MVP.

I did miss that link in the article, thanks for the reply and answer.

This is a very interesting article, as I'd heard references to SPDY before, but didn't know what it was.

However, I am bothered by the fact that this is a piece on performance yet it contains no hard data. Without quantifying the scale of the improvement, I have no idea if this is a 2% optimization, or a 15% one.

Also, does it matter if only one side of a connection has slow start enabled? IE, does it require symmetrical SPDY, or would I see improvements on my server and desktop if I made this change?

(Side note: the requirement for performance data is analogous to ROI data in business.)

I think it has to develop. You can't slap it on like it's a feature, because authenticity is one of the most important components of personality/voice.

I basically try to avoid squashing the personality. Just by not thinking like a PHB, or a corporate manager, I seem to avoid being bland. And I try to have fun as I'm developing something.

Also, its better to be personal than impersonal (contrary to what I was taught about writing essays).

I personally know this to be false. Over 2 years ago, I deleted my facebook account. Approximately 6 months later, I accidentally got auto logged in by LastPass when I clicked a link and ended up on the FB login page. It simply welcomed me back with all my data intact.

I'm quite sure that I went through the deletion process, then waited far more than the "14 day" requirement.

|The traditional adage is that when you dress for success, people take you more seriously. I'd like to believe that this particular industry is beyond that, which may or may not be true, but the truth is that when you dress up, you take yourself more seriously.

Being taken more seriously is a goal of some people. I take the opposite approach -- I try to take myself as un-seriously as possible. I encourage others to do the same.

I am, however, very serious about my work.

I use google apps to host my email for my company, with all emails backed up to our server. Why is that foolish?

You cannot guarantee or expect search result placement. Period. In addition, rankings are always in flux, and require additional work to remain well ranked. Do you expect the provider to continue to work on your SEO even after that period?

If they are a reputable SEO, they will provide you with an analysis of your current site, a statement of work for what they will accomplish for their fee, and note that rankings cannot be guaranteed. If they fulfilled the work, you just have to understand how uncertain SEO can be.

Then teach yourself the basics of SEO and save yourself the cash next time.

I don't think he's talking about being rich, although he does reference money a lot. I interpreted the money references as a simple way to keep score (and one deeply ingrained in many cultures).

I think he's talking about the modern entrepreneur. Specifically, the people who are creating new markets, or are disrupting old markets. In order to do that, you need to be different than other people. I think he's saying that separates him from others because the drive for being fundamentally different (not the "color your hair" type, but the "visionary entrepreneur") is at odds with the human need for commiseration or comparability.

What if it's not a binary (advertising works/ doesn't work)? In my view, part of Google's success is they allowed advertisers (as well as self serve businesses) to better measure the ROI from the advertising. In other words, for direct response campaigns, the best option pre-AdWords was through TV. But Adwords really let's you measure your ROI with a granularity not possible with mailers/tv ads.

So direct response campaigns existed before google b/c there was some value holding it up; Google just came along and revolutionized it. That's part of their power from the advertisers POV -- metrics.

Large, nationwide branding campaigns have been effective b/c the entry cost to run one means they are only feasible to large corporations. And those corps have the resources to run the market surveys that are really necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign. Smaller ad budgets just can't do the followup efficacy measurements.

I definitely think both direct and branding based advertising works. I wonder if Facebook's play will be to revolutionize large branding campaigns, while google focused on the direct response (CPC v CPM, at its core).

I'm guessing he's implying that higher level thought processes more associated with intelligence act as a defense against the advertising influence.

Why can't we focus on correcting injustice for its own sake, rather than picking teams? [Not so much directed at you; I've found this discussing very thought provoking. More directed at "everyone" waves hands that seems to feel its an us-versus-them argument.]

Learning to just do something when it resonates with you. Stop asking permissions, stop asking ahead of time what the outcomes will be. Treating the market as a lab, of sorts, rather than trying to predict results ahead of time.

This isn't a one size fits all type question, or one that somebody can really give good advice on without knowing the details of the situation. Here's what I would ask myself: - is your market very diverse (e.g. is it very unlikely the new competitors can capture a dominant share?) - is your market large? - do you believe you can supply something more than your competitors?

eventually, those questions should be used as input to the real question: can you still run your business successfully, or does getting beat to market by the competition prevent you from executing?

Ignoring the concerns about AES256 cyphers for this response...

The site that I use for my passwords is called Clipperz. (www.clipperz.com/beta). They encrypt everything in JS like the others, but they've fully released their source code for inspection. I know JS, and it looks legit, although I can't speak to their encryption technique (although they did everything else so well, I use that as a proxy for their competence).

The other cool thing is that they allow you to download an html/js/css file so you can open your passwords even when offline (big file, 1.5MB or so, but handy to keep your encrypted passwords around offline).