ct4ul4u

I don't think Facebook is buyable right now. Consider how wide the PDF of its future values is. There is a chance that Facebook will be bigger than Google. I'm sure many of you have reasons why it won't happen, but it is plausible. It's certainly what Facebook management is shooting for.

Alternatively, Facebook could be out of fashion in 2 years. Don't forget that we work in a fashion industry. It wouldn't even be worth its last post-money valuation.

So the expected value of Facebook lies somewhere in between and that expected value is radically short of management's dreams. They don't need cash and they seem to be executing well. This is not a recipe for strategic acquisition.

I think Facebook will remain private and independent for as long as it can. If they are on a path to success and need more cash, they'll IPO (remember those?). If they keep their user base, but can't scale their monetization, they'll be bought by somebody who can (a search engine). The worst case isn't pretty because they don't have the backstop that has been supporting MySpace through its troubles (music).

I suspect that "I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone" should be read as "I won't invest in something like that anymore." He's a VC after all. My take is that he wants to see more interesting and compelling opportunities for his portfolio and believes they are built on top of the platform rather than augmenting it.

Maybe they think these skills define membership in a useful cluster?

Chris Anderson is not actually an expert on anything, you know. He's just somebody who has made a bunch of anecdotal observations and written a few books about them.

There must be some campaign of secrecy around ASN.1. When I mention it to otherwise well-informed developers, they have never heard of it. It doesn't help that the really high performance marshalling libraries aren't open source.

I would assume he meant the legal boundaries of the City of Houston, which is what the term "proper" usually means in that case.

These sound like technology use cases to me.

And affect is also a noun (psychology term).

-r

How does he get from the the text of the article, which approximately says "It would be useful in some cases for a database to be dynamically typed" to the sweeping statement "Databases Should be Dynamically Typed".

As others have noted, relational databases have a rigorous theoretical foundation that is not consistent with what he describes as dynamic typing. He should consider looking at a graph database. Many of these are billed as "RDF Stores" or "Triple Stores". Franz's AllegroGraph is an excellent example.

I think the problem Google Wave is intended to solve is Facebook. Facebook being a problem for Google, rather than a problem for the user.

While I agree that "positive rights" frequently amount to legally mandated wealth transfer, saying your neighbors must "work as slaves" is a bit extreme. A slave has no choice as to whether they work, what they work on, and how they work.

Personally, I have no problem with the fact that property rights are not absolute (taxation and regulation being the primary inroads). That limitation of the property right results in much that I think is good.

For the most part, the only thing angel investors have is cash. They have nothing you should pay them for. Fred Wilson's support for Jason Calcanis' position is particularly telling, given that Union Square provides a great deal more than cash (I've seen them in action). If you have to pay to get a potential investor to listen to your plan, you either need a new plan or a new investor.

Paying angel investors for access is only one step removed from wiring money to Nigeria in a 419 scam.

His life is not on the line. He will have the opportunity to take more risks in the future. When he tries out armed robbery, I'll start to believe he's putting his life on the line.

One point, garbage collection is a risky job and there is a substantial risk premium built into the salary.

The Pareto principle is an observation. It does not declare that all distributions are Pareto distributions. The application of the observation to optimization is not itself the Pareto principle.

I am confident that ongoing over-promising will make AI winter a continuing reality.

I'm really tired of all the people who think they have the line on the best way to do something, particularly when that something involves interacting with human beings. We're all hill climbing here. Nobody even knows if we're on the right mountain.

He has some points, but misses others. Ability to code on a whiteboard is a valuable skill for a collaborative lead developer. For a junior guy getting his direction from elsewhere, not so much. Some people's work persona comes out right away. Other people take months. One great developer who worked for me seemed like a total failure till he came out of his shell.

Human beings are too complex for one-size-fits-all evaluation. This applies to the interviewer as much as the interviewee. Will your "best way" be best for me? Probably not. Can I learn from works best for you? Absolutely!

A little humility goes a long way.

He's got a model of Stonehenge and it's not 18" high.