htsh

I had luck with the book "Its not carpal tunnel" or something -- http://bit.ly/Ocwy5 .. It suggested some stretches, one which worked in my case.

My pinky and half my ring finger were going numb from the bottom of my wrist sitting on either the desk or the laptop, and the exercise that worked for me involved holding my arm straight out away from me and repeatedly twisting it at my shoulder.

I found a good doctor in Chinatown, NY who recommended the book and suggested stretching daily instead of looking to any of the various surgeries suggested by other doctors.

out of curiosity, why Fedora?

In my experience I've seen it used in servers quite a bit, typically those running cpanel. Its very similar to RHEL but without the pay-support plans. I've helped to run a machine running it for 3-4 years now, with no real issues.

I'm with Mr. Manjoo here. Check out that screenshot -- it looks like an interface nightmare similar to AOL in the 90's. Where are my eyes supposed to go? What do I click on? Personally, I find this a noted departure from the simplicity I like in Google's other products -- this looks more like outlook than it does gmail.

I'm also curious about the potential use cases for such a tool. I can see students using this a lot, I guess, but I don't know if I see anything compelling enough to make me change the way I use email.

I'm not sure if they've ever claimed that its a not-for-profit event in the way you've described. Some of that money goes into the hands of the people organizing the event (who happen to be investors).

This sounds a bit shady to me. They get 100 startups to pay 5k each, then they choose 2 of those startups to fund 250k and 50k, with 200k going to cover their costs? In the end, you have 98 unhappy startups paying for 2 startups to launch and to pay these people.

I could not agree more. Technical skills are empowering, especially in this world before us where software is still a growth industry.

Also -- if you're like me and you end up feeling guilty for making a shameless run for money, you have a set of skills that you can step outside and help any non-profit with. Its what drew me to law as well -- I figured I can be helpful to many that otherwise lack money for these sorts of things.

I think its natural for an intellectually curious person to feel doubts about whatever they choose.

Personally -- I studied Econ as an undergrad, worked at 2 startups for 2 years, then nonprofits for the next 3, and then law school and a big firm job. When I was sitting in that law firm office, I hated my life relative to both the non-profit world and the startup world. Of the 3, the startup world allowed me to live as I most liked.

The thing that I miss about the startup world is that its a meritocracy. Your knowledge and your ability will determine where you stand, not your cultural status or car or whose parents you know. If you know more and can do more than the next guy, you have a voice that people want to hear, regardless of your age, tattoos, vices, etc.

I was nearby under the dust cloud as well -- living in our loft/office in Chinatown where we were still folding our startup up after the market collapse a year prior. I was taking a shower when I heard the first plane hit. I thought it was a construction accident until my roommate knocked on the bathroom door and told me that the world trade center is blowing up or something. I remember thinking, "Again?"

Just to be clear, this is their 2nd subscriber program. The first Ars Premier program launched eight years ago: http://arstechnica.com/staff/palatine/2009/09/introducing-ar...

Agreed, but I'd still think jailbroken is the way to go for the many that are stuck in contracts and can't really afford the $200 to break early.

Its all about the developers (as Ballmer says). You'd be doing your part to channel effort away from this awful system into a third party that does not censor or cripple your hardware's functionality:

Check out this bit from Slashdot yesterday:

"The 4-month-old Cydia store is yielding notably higher sales for a few application developers than Apple's AppStore, and is reportedly running on over 4 million Apple iPhone devices, with perhaps 350,000 connected at any one time. In this store, developers are distributing applications they've written that push the limits of Apple's normal AppStore policies, with software to add file downloads to Safari, trick applications into thinking they're on Wi-Fi (for VoIP), and enhance other types functionality. You'll also find the popular Google Voice application, which was recently rejected by Apple."--http://bit.ly/199gAh

My friends who have allegedly done this report that restoring the phone to a point where it can get officially serviced has not been a problem. One has allegedly done so multiple times.

And I think if its the type of problem such that you can't even restore it to factory, they're not going to be able to tell either when they fix or replace it.

I would think that a more proper boycott of Apple's policy in this case would be to jailbreak the iphone. This way, you're boycotting the app store, not the phone itself.

grooveshark, still wonky interface but its as close to spotify I can find on our shores.

..of course I still use dropbox .. who doesn't? I stopped using evernote as I got tired of having to use Wine to run it..

FYI:

"3jam beta costs $4.99 with a 12-month subscription, but price is indirectly proportional to commitment. A three-month bundle costs $5.99, and you'll pay $8.99 for one month. The charge won't include texting rates, which 3jam will tack on for $5 to $20 per month."

Reddit is still a fantastic place for discussion. Also it arguably has a better interface i.e. orange mailbox, saved links, etc. Perhaps not for startup stuff, but for politics & pop culture I think Reddit continues to do as good a job as anyone. Also, its tough to criticize Reddit with a blanket statement considering there are many independently moderated subreddits (arguably including this very site).

I like the comparison though I also like the wave pattern. For example, weekends are definitely worse than weekdays.

I am not sure but I think what has gone unspoken here is the recent decline in quality of content on this site. Perhaps this is why he's concerned?

He doesn't help his cause very much with his often arrogant bully tactics. Sometimes it seems like he enjoys insulting people who comment, which isn't really so different from Ron Artest jumping into the crowd to fight with folks, is it?

I think there's something to be said about the indication users of the site will get from knowing that profit-maximizing will never be a goal of the software. It may pay some salaries (as wikipedia does) but it will never sell out its purpose first and foremost as a collaborative tool.

to clarify #2 - the question is whether businesses can be crafted somewhat similar to how open source software is crafted, which is democratically. Somehow, entrepreneurs could get together and butt heads and form small idea-groups that go off and talk on their own, with features like the software figuring out how much each person's contribution is worth, etc.

With free software, say someone has a good feature they want implemented, they have a means to affect that change in theory in a way a user can not do with closed source software. If they can't win the project over, they can fork the idea and start their own variation. the theory is that these kinds of mini-democracies lead to the most efficient software, could this work for businesses as well?

Forgot, something I sometimes do on the side is work on my fake Sean Hannity fan-site @ http://www.fannity.com. This is a intentionally ignorant joke that attempts to fool people, both liberals and conservatives, with sometimes hilarious results. A story of mine was posted on blackplanet.com and it led to some hilarious comments left by a few thousand visitors from that site over a weekend.

Also, at one point the fake news site 23/6 thought my fake news site was real (and actually advocated that Sikhs put flag pins on turbans). This is perhaps the most hilarious thing that happened on the site: http://fannity.com/?p=553&cpage=1 . The users "backdoorman" & "gacracker" were in on the joke and pretending to be Hannity fans.

excellent. will email after my breakfast & coffee this morning. -hitesh

I can see that. We thought we'd keep it wiki-style at the beginning, possibly setting it up as a foundation. we think its more likely that legal clinics & others are more likely to trust it & use it that way. We would start as narrow as possible, possibly focusing on mental health working with the clinic I used to work with and then expanding outwards.

transitioning away from my legal work back to startup work, learning rails while working on 2 early ideas and 1 underway.

the 2 ideas i'm at will to share:

1 - .org - wikipedia-style database of case-law commonly used by pro-bono lawyers -- create something that would assist legal clinics manage their information locally but also something that stores that data and shares it with other clinics doing similar work. caselaw is supposed to be free and without copyright but somehow its come to be locked up by the lexis/westlaw duopoly. I understand they add value, but we believe there is room for a simple database of opinions & briefs, even w/o the shepherdizing.

2 - .com - brainstorming site for early stage startup development, using principles from Covey & Napoleon Hill. i.e. weekly meetings with small groups of founders discussing multiple ideas, voting immediately upon disagreements, etc.

I'd love to discuss the last idea as its the one I'm actually working on coding right now but the folks I'm working with want to remain hush-hush for now.

I'd be fascinated to hear folks' ideas for startups with a broad focus on the role technology can play in community development, government & regulation & even stuff like troll regulation / comment scoring. If anyone wants to IM or chat, hit me up at hitesh@gmail.com.

I'd love to hear other people's speculation as to what they're doing. I think that they're going to build a massive suite a cloud-based apps, potentially even offering things like your iTunes library wherever you are on the internet. And I wouldn't even be surprised if pro-level stuff like Final Cut & Soundbooth made its way to the cloud at some point.

It makes sense to me as there's a big overall shift in that direction. Thoughts?

If its Google we're talking about even if the youtube portion of the company is losing money, does it matter? I think its pretty safe to assume that youtube will survive.

I mean, I'd assume that the idea of a loss leader somewhat applies here as well. Youtube is the leading brand for video on the internet, and that's worth something to the bigger Google brand.

Don't get me wrong, I think the debate about "free" is a debate worth having, I just don't like the misleading/sensational headline.

Agreed, but I'm not going to forget how bad it was even 2 years ago when wifi & graphics drivers made for a pretty rough experience.

I agree, though, we've come a long way already but at the same time I would be happier if I knew for sure it would never happen again, especially with peripherals. As far as I know, a lot of consumer level hardware (like multifunction printers) are still sold with Vista drivers only.

Beyond drivers as well we'll see if Adobe can work on Flash for Linux to make it as fast as Windows, etc.

I'm not clear on this -- how can it be open source without allowing programmers access to the underlying OS?

Also, I would be surprised if the OS doesn't allow for running any local apps but you may be right.

Also, I guess some Linux folks (like myself) are upset because we wanted to see a full-on competitor to msft with Google branding, i.e. Goobuntu. There have been rumors for years about a Google-branded Linux distribution coming out and its a bit disappointing that its not the whole hog.