bugsy

I don't even like the term "illegal sites". It's like the term "illegal books" or "illegal thoughts".

Anyone advocating for sites to be illegal is probably not too interested in freedom.

Can sites advocate doing illegal things? Sure, just like books. I can legally write, publish, buy and read books on how to make bombs and drugs. That is different from actually making and using bombs and drugs though, a very important distinction. There are plenty of documentaries and movies that show drugs and bombs being made and some are quite accurate. That is not illegal either.

Can sites be used to gather together to plan criminal activity? Sure, that's called conspiracy and is illegal whether done with the internet, via phone, postal letter, or meeting in a cave with dissidents. Again, a site being a medium of conspiracy doesn't make sites illegal any more than paper used to convey a bank robber's note makes paper illegal.

And he's not an expert in 90% of the things he teaches. He's just quite good at understanding things quickly and explaining it to others, like Feynman was. Being called Khan Academy is apropro, it's mostly about his teaching and he is irreplaceable. Fortunately, video lives forever and most of the subjects are not transient.

This article seems to be an ad for this guy's product, which is non-accredited college degrees from an online school. There's a lot of organizations doing online degrees, this is not very unique.

The comparisons to Khan are bizarre.

I had things locked down great, as I had gone to work with them to implement my IP that they required fundamentally as part of their business. They signed a licensing agreement and a document outlining the various inventions I had coming in to it. After their product was ready to ship, there was a buy out offer, but required exclusive ownership of my IP. The license was non-transferable and required renegotiation. They didn't like this and asked me to transfer ownership outright to them for free or they would fire me and I would lose all my equity. They had absolutely no case whatsoever, but this didn't stop them from launching legal proceedings against me. These went no where since it was only for the purpose of strongarming and intimidating me. At one point, a vice president of the company was telephoning relatives of mine and threatening them if I didn't cave. I didn't cave, held to my position (which was very reasonable), and they didn't bother to proceed since they knew they had no case, but only after tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to top notch lawyers to represent me against them. Several months after this they sold to another company (Fortune 500 sort) and lied to them that they owned my IP, not mentioning me at all. That company then patented it, with the VP claiming to have invented it. At the same time I have his signature on a licensing agreement, the exact text describing the invention which appears on their new patent, granted some 10 years after I first implemented it. (It was previously a trade secret that I was selectively licensing.) Of course the next question is why don't I sue them. That's easy. At the end of all this I was broke and in debt and there's no lawyer taking IP cases pro bono. They are tremendously expensive and in the end the company with the deeper pockets nearly always wins. Good IP lawyers run $400+ per hour.

Like many others here, the couple times I've been along from start to exit, despite all the contracts and promises and hard work at low pay with no overtime, key contributions, etc, so far, never a dollar, and in one case, a protracted legal battle as they tried to steal my preexisting IP which I had a signed agreement from them acknowledging belonging to me, signed before I started work.

"At some point, not too soon after the theft took place, that prototype was in that house."

You have absolutely no proof of that. If you do please link to it. Statements from Apple goons aren't evidence. I could state that you are a terrorist pedophile so we should search your house for child porn and bombs. That doesn't make you one unless there is actual evidence shown to a judge in order to get a search warrant.

"This guy has at least some relation to the theft"

Not so, that is not known yet. Is the civilian GPS resolution sufficient to hit exactly one house? Does it ever give errors? How long was the signal at this house? When? When did the signal stop transmitting? Has anyone been to his house within the last week? How about in the general area? Meter readers? Deliverymen? Sure, he was at the business where the Apple employee got drunk and left the phone behind. Just like thousands of other people in that time frame, many of which undoubtedly are from his neighborhood or passed through at some point.

I don't understand why people in the Netherlands are so gung ho about emigrating to the US. All I hear from europeans is how the US is a warmongering nation that has health care only for the rich. I think that's largely true, but then why is there such a big rush to come here to work. Could it be that The Netherlands is not the paradise that it is commonly promoted as?

I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Nothing special, just the sort of ease of moving in that they expect the US to provide to their people.

Yes, this is disturbing. Contrary to some claims, this was not an off limits area. It was on the Pennsylvania Avenue (which is closed to vehicle traffic but not people here) and is a public area. It is extremely wide and the protestors were not blocking anyone.

Ah, thanks for that correction, I mistakenly read "I am a 26 year retired law enforcement professional" as "I am a 26 year old retired law enforcement professional".

Some folks have the idea that that leaders boss people around and tell them what to do. That's actually micro-managing or dictatorship depending on whether it's corporate or government level.

Leaders are people that inspire others who follow them in some way. It's not about being an authoritarian or having power.

I agree. Lost iPhone 5 is a really big issue, the last lost model was international news. There can be little doubt that Cook was briefed on it. I seriously doubt he had no opinion about it voiced in that meeting.

Furthermore, someone at Apple at some point in the past decided they needed a private police force with badges and uniforms that looks like real police, and recruited from "retired" police (how can one be 26 and retired anyway). That's not a casual decision by some middle manager, that's another CEO level decision, and that one probably came from Jobs.

Hopefully Apple will start selling computers with Snow Leopard again.

Fantastic, I look forward to purchasing a complete functioning PC for $25. I hope someone is taking preorders somewhere too.

He is single handedly creating the product that is to be the source of their income from scratch. $65k is much less than half salary for this position.

How is it a flame? The $100 OLPC doesn't exist, the $10 India PC doesn't exist and this $25 PC doesn't exist. You confirm this with your post and then claim I am flaming and downvotes warranted.

If they exist, where are they?

I might as well post about the $75 automobile we have for sale, details on engine and number of wheels not available as we haven't decided, but the one thing we know is it's $75. Completely absurd to be taking such a claim seriously. The product doesn't exist. Pointing to products that cost substantially more doesn't prove anything. I can buy a new ASUS Eee PC 1015PE Seashell with 1GB RAM, a 1.66GHz processor and a 160GB hard drive for $200. That is something that is for sale and being produced by a for-profit company. OPLCs produced for $200 are not evidence that the $100 OPLC exists. The $100 OPLC never existed, nor did the $10 Indian PC, nor does this $25 PC claim.

This is an amazing article. The level of dysfunction and inappropriate external control demanded in setting up payment processing was far beyond what I would have imagined was possible setting up a business outside North Korea.

Very good post there. Sometimes of course it is corrupt as well, and all for good intentions. As long as we are doing something for appearances sake, might as well help our buddies out. Locally I see these government funded business incubators and business parks built. Conference room, fax machine, staff to answer a bank of phones and pretend it is a real company. Business park construction contract goes to this guy's cousin who is a friend of the guy who donates. His niece will be the secretary. We have a connection that has some chairs he picked up from a dumpster, let's just make up a receipt that says we bought them new for $1100 each. Hurray, we are creating jobs. Even have a couple of tenants for the new building, there is a guy whose dream it is to own an ice cream cart, a lady that wants to open her own nail salon and start making more than minimum wage working for others, and an old guy who has been printing coupon flyers with advertisements for local businesses out of his garage. They are incubating, see? Soon this will all pay off somehow. If not, well those construction jobs were real jobs, so it worked, success. Government initiatives really do work. Jobs were created and that's a fact.

The term "coder" is a demeaning one that is solely used to denigrate the contributions of product developers.

If you are the only product developer at a company, you are not a "coder". The correct title would be Director of Product Development, or VP of Software Engineering.

"A typical 22 year old developer is not capable of creating a foundational product."

Yes that is what I said. I'm not sure if you're restating my point as a rebuttal or if you are agreeing with me though.

If you can create a foundational product, you are worth what I say. If you can't, then it appears the founders don't know what they are doing and the equity is worth absolutely nothing because the business has no chance of success.

OK thanks, fair enough. I had thought he was responding to the latest one that made the rounds here - http://flyosity.com/application-design/if-you-can-think-desi...

Seems he wasn't though.

OLPC has a $100 PC, India has a $10 PC, and now these guys have a $25 PC.

What do they all have in common? They all have in common that NONE OF THEM EXIST. Yes, that's right. These projects get announced as if they are factual existing devices, with announcements using verb tenses suggesting they are currently in production and available. But then looking for details we find that no one is sure what the form of the device will be, or what parts will be involved because they are not developed products. That is a deceptive practice. And you know what, people who resort to such deceptive practices aren't the sorts of persons that can manage to deliver the goods.

edit: wow, downvotes, that is awesome. When downvoting, please also respond with a web page where I can purchase OLPC for $100, the India PC for $10, or this one for $25. Thanks.

The recent article he is responding to posits that designers who code are valuable. That is true. To debunk the claims properly he would need to show that designers who code are not valuable. Instead he debunked the straw man argument "designers should code".

Typical 22 yr old developer making market rate isn't in charge of creating the foundational product of a company single-handedly. So those numbers are irrelevant. For someone with this level of responsibility and involvement, $500,000 would be a more reasonable salary. He's not a code monkey, he's the main guy in charge of, and doing, it all.

Curious what the co-founder does, is he the idea guy, or is he the dude that will start thinking about marketing and sales sometime after the product is done. Is he getting a salary from the primary investor or is your salary the only expense.

If your salary is the only expense, then you are investing $65k a year as well since you are working for half normal salary in order to design and build the entire product that is the basis of the company from scratch. Given this, I'd estimate your contribution as either 50% or 100% of the company value depending on whether or not you are getting this salary from the investor, aka founder man.

Not that you'll get this of course, unless you had previously chosen to go for 100% by simply developing it on your own after asking yourself what the other guys were contributing (not much).

But it's too late for all this, you've signed a contract, so you should follow through, be happy with it, and do a good job. Thinking you were screwed won't do anyone any good, but if a job appears that offers more than $65k, if it was me in your position I wouldn't feel all that bad about taking it.

Compared to London, Berlin is less expensive, better food, has more fun stuff to do, better weather, better accessibility, vastly more attractive women, and less of a police state. I'm sorry they are so offended but London just isn't all that much fun to visit.

Decent article.

A note though, I find the 3-D engraved body text that is popular on some sites such as this one to be harder to read than flat body text. A bit of eyestrain comes with it.

This is a pretty cool article. The key point as I understand it is that the bank is ISO 27001 Certified, but doesn't have testers, source control or a list of bugs. (The rest of the Joel test isn't as big a deal, but these are kind of big ones that indicate cowboy coding and not any sort of process at all.)

Article is behind a paywall.

I have a question. They note they have notified officials. I've tried notifying the FBI after our sites have been hacked, but they are not interested in it. Is there some other place to report? Does anyone really investigate this stuff?