gersh

What is the history of IPOs for companies traded on private market exchanges? Does an official IPO give the company a pop?

Do we need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing uncensored internet access?

Groupon is in about 250 markets I think. So, that is 40 people per market. If half are customer support, that would be like 20 people per market in sales. That would mean the average salesperson, sets up 1 deal/month. Although, they probably churn through sales-people. So, if half the sales people are totally incompetent, that might be two deals per salesperson per month. Plus, there is probably some other stuff with Groupon Now.

In 1996, many websites turned black to protest the community decency act. It was passed but invalidated by the supreme court. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_World_Wide_Web_protest. Far fewer people were on the internet then, so today, something like that would have a far bigger impact.

How much of the stock performance could be accounts from buybacks?

Is Donald Knuth's approach the complete opposite of the lean startup methodology? Are too many people just trying to follow the latest trends?

HP has a program where they hire new law school grads. See http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/hp_opts_for_training_... .

My understanding of this is you buy a futures contract that says you get so much metal on a certain date. The date arrives, and Goldman Sachs tells you that you own the metal, but it is in our warehouse. Further, you have to wait months before you can get it out of the warehouse, and you owe rent until then.

Is this just biased towards the type of projects done on Newrelic?

Somebody has to write the deployment scripts, choose a cloud platform, and update the platform. If a cheaper cloud platform comes out, somebody has to figure out which platform is cheaper. You may have automated error logging, but someone has to go through the logging and see what went wrong. Somebody should also look over how reliable the platform is.

If your business only requires a standard Rails site, there may standard tools. However, when you develop new technology, someone has to deal with deployment and scalability issues. This may be more of a developer job, but there are significant sysadmin issues.

If you are going to be a self-sufficient farmer, you need land. Otherwise, you need something you can trade for food. If you can't produce something that anyone wants, you are labor isn't worth much. If you labor isn't worth enough to eat, you starve.

China inflates its currency to buy dollars. Then, US consumers use those dollars to buy products from China, which requires employing lots of people.

The government could just hand out money to poor people, but that could just result in lots more corruption. They can also create useless jobs but that also has problems.

What are their IP policies? Do they want to abolish all copyrights and patents? Do they just want shorter terms?

Where should investors be putting their money? The stock market is extremely volatile, and it is no higher than it was years ago. T-bonds are paying historically low interest. Even real estate looks really risky. Meanwhile, startups have been doing relatively well. Startups like AirBNB, Groupon, and Dropbox have all grown really fast.

Huh. Just write the algorithm in say c, and have node do a callback when the algorithm is complete.

Wasn't Ruby invented in Japan?

So, how do you pitch the CIO on something the company is already using?

Salesperson: This software is so easy and ... CIO: Won't it be a big learning curve Saleperson: Well, actually, your company is already using our software

Consider this:

for ( int i=0 ; i < this.MyControl.TabPages.Count ; i++ ) { try { this.MyControl.TabPages.Remove (this.MyControl.TabPages[i] ); i--; } catch(Exception e) { } }

Can this be simplified? If this syntax were used elsewhere in the program, but we didn't want to catch the exception in this particular case, should we copy-paste this, and remove the try block? Might there be a situation where preserving the syntax makes the program clearer?

People unsubscribe, spam filters kick in, or people just start ignoring the email.

How soon until wall street comes out with an advertising backed derivative. Then, the two worlds can merge.

How does it work? How does it handle configuration and installation?

Every trader knows black-scholes doesn't work. According to black-scholes the volatility curve should be flat, but it is actually a smile. Believing black-scholes works is like believing the earth is flat.

They could do a matching fund, or provide tax incentives.

Magento can't even do a shopping cart properly. The default is a really messy shopping cart, and it is a pain to customize it. You gotta hack everything just to make a one page checkout.

Zuckerberg started a social network at HARVARD. What part of being doesn't involve being part of building a social network at Harvard not involve "being part of the right social circles"?

How much do those ebooks make? How hard is it to make $1000/month selling ebooks?

Are your people better than the competition? If your competitors have great engineers, you may top talent to compete. If it is some forgotten nitch, you may be able to get away with less.

Are starups really that hard, or do they just require certain skills? Is it luck? Are you in the wrong place in the wrong time? Do you just lack the necessary skills? Do you lack the social support?

In school, you just gotta do what the teacher tells you to do, and you get an 'A'. You get a job and you just gotta be able to do what your boss wants you to do. Startups require you to find your own nitch, and do something different. No one is telling you what to do.

So, you can work real hard and work like before, but end up pursuing an empty hole. However, is this really harder?

Johm builds allows to use data types on top of Redis. I implemented the ability to query multiple fields at https://github.com/gersh/johm. I've been discussing ways to implement more complex queries on Johm mailing list.

Currently, I believe Redis has enough functionality do a lot. I think it should be possible to build more query-like features on top of Redis, and preserve more flexibility in terms of how the querying works. Then, you could decide how far you want to go with SQL-like functionality.

How did Zuckerberg build such a cult following? You're crazy if you don't use this service. Even Apple hasn't achieved that.

Eye color is nothing. Can you remember faces and names?

I struggle to remember names of faces of people. I have very poor memory for names, faces, and all that sort of thing. I don't remember the names of movies, celebrities or any of that sort of thing. I remember by people by their intellectual thoughts (I.E. the person who though X, or the person with spoke with this sort of vocabulary).

Am I a mathematician? Not really. I gave up on mathematics after I got addicted to the 3x+1 problem.