jmackinn

Sorry, but I don't see where you are getting the idea that you have a 'right to not want to waste bandwidth'. That is your choice, not a right, so if you don't want to waste bandwidth then don't use high bandwidth sites.

While I can certainly see why someone would want to use Instapaper and that it clearly has a lot of benefits for the user, that doesn't change the fact that their app operates in a grey area of copyright infringement.

Just because something is practical does not mean that it is therefore legal.

It would be good to hear a logical justification for the mm-dd-yyyy. I'm not sure I can come up with one. It makes it hard to search and it doesn't follow any sequential order. yyyy-mm-dd actually goes up by one each day. Try it next time you have to number give files a date stamp and you'll find it makes your life a lot simpler.

I'm not sure how founders are being screwed here. They are asking for (in most cases) millions of dollars to develop a likely unproven idea. Also, VC's are not in the business of coddling founders. They are making an investment that they hope will return a profit and that is what is expected by their investors. Places like YC try to cultivate and encourage the founders, but they only give you ~$10000. If you want a couple million then you have to be willing to play the game.

You are right in the fact that new startups should be looking at new and innovative ways to fund themselves and I hope that people take that point away from reading articles like this.

It seems to be that the article is confusing neutrality or suspended judgment with avoiding judgment. It is not pretending to be wise, it is indifference.

A teacher who sees two children in a fight has likely seen those children fight before. After seeing the same fight occur over and over they just don't care who started it. Figuring out who started it becomes a chicken and an egg situation.

This example from the article reveals an interesting point about passing judgment in general:

...judges in the actual legal system can repeatedly hand down real verdicts without automatically losing their reputation for impartiality

That is because judges rule based on a set of written laws which they interpret depending on the situation. Picking ethical or moral side of a situation has no such standard.

Perhaps the writer also missed the idea that the majority of people in this world do not like conflict. Having to pick sides creates conflict. They are not trying to be wise as much as they are trying to avoid something that makes them uncomfortable.

Arguments are not black and white. Demanding the people pass judgment over situation where they do not know all of the information, do not have a set measurement for passing judgment and most likely do not care is unwise.

Research, shopping, gaming, news, movies, tv, downloading, and of course porn.

This new article is also very misleading with it's inclusion of 'stem cells'. They did a bone marrow transplant, not a stem cell transplant. While there are stem cells (not embryonic stem cells) in bone marrow, calling it a stem cell transplant is incorrect.

It's very satisfying working with pen and paper at times. I try to keep notebooks of ideas and projects and am marginally successful at it, but this guy was dedicated. It's really cool to be able to see your work like that.

Sure, here's a drive I was looking at just recently - http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=279

There are drives out there that support Macs but they are generally fairly expensive and are basically full file servers. I would just like a simple external hard drive that I could plug into my router.

Most external hard drives that support network attached storage do not work with Mac's.

A class system may be extreme, but there is now a visual distinction between users and comments will likely be skewed by that.

I don't think pg has ever disabled accounts for having a long discussion. I've also have never read the idea of long conversations being discouraged by anyone here.

Could you please elaborate on that.

Is this really the direction that YC News should be headed? I don't think that this is a good idea and could easily lead to many problems. As some people here have pointed out, comments on new stories will be discouraged, deep and long threads will be curtailed, and comments are likely to get longer. It also creates a sort of class system within the community. Now a person's karma level is visually seen all the time.

Who told you that names are supposed to be short and distinctive? Security Situation is a pretty damn good name if you're starting a security company. Impressing the web 2.0 fanboys with misspellings makes your company look illiterate to everyone else. If you're simply going after those fanboys (or girls) as you target audience then that is fine but considering how many people are web 2.0ers and how many regular people there are, when starting a company I'm probably going to go after the far bigger market.

Google video still exists and can be used there can just be nothing new added. Although I'll miss new content coming up.

I have always dreamed of being able to build a suburb community, with the poor building materials and rush production methods used, in the middle of nowhere and never let anyone move in. Just leave it and see how long it would take for it to return to nature. I might actually get the chance to see this happen now.

I think the main problem with that idea is that the warehouses and lofts of most cities were located in the run down downtown areas and often near the waterfront of the city, as most cities old warehouses were originally used in shipping. Suburbs on the other hand, and especially the ones in concern with this article are in the middle of nowhere.

Artists/startups wanted to be located in the city and close to the things they needed because, as with wanting cheap place to live, they didn't have money for cars. The majority of these now abandon suburbs were entirely designed to be used by cars. They are bedroom communities with nothing in or around them but houses, and poorly built houses at that.

This was only uploaded after they had fallen through getting a sponsor for the series. John August decided to show it to people because it was unlikely that it was going to be seen anywhere else.

John August's blog is part of my regular reading. He is a great screen writer. If you are at all interested in screen writing or the business of Hollywood in general then I would highly recommend his blog.

Why are editorial comments something you want to discourage? I'm not for or against the idea really but I have always wondered what the reasoning is.

Why don't you have a mission about how Daily Mission can make money?

I am a huge fan of Excel. It's the program that I use most for doing work.

At the entry user end, there are so many features that are simply unusable or technically way to difficult. For the power user of Excel, there is very little that can't be accomplished. It's power is basically limitless with VBA (or choose your favorite scripting language). Apart from the comment suggesting larger sizes to the sheets (larger than 1 million rows) and being online (something that would really not fly in most corporations) I can't find a problem in here that can't be accomplished with Excel and a firm knowledge of scripting for it. This may be a cop-out though as you must actually script the stuff yourself. This, however; is why I love this program so much.

So as for building a more powerful spreadsheet program for the power user market, it's going to be very hard for anyone to produce something that does more because it's already basically limitless.

For the novice user though, the program is convoluted, confusing and extremely limited. The novice user also represents a much bigger market. I have had several jobs simply because people couldn't do things in Excel that I assumed a monkey could do. Companies love Excel even though 99% of employees at them have no idea how to do basic things with it (summing columns for example). Giving some of the 99% of employees a program that they can do basic to intermediate things without having the limitless back end scripting power would put me out of many of my jobs.

Excel at the start is like a country kid visiting the big city for the first time. There is just way to much power in it and the map for getting around is far too confusing, but once you've been living there for a while everything about it becomes a breeze. Making that adjustment easier would be a huge benefit.

On a side note I enjoy using Google Spreadsheets but one of my top wishes is that Google, or someone, would implement either a Google scripting language or a allow for other scripting languages (Ruby, Python, VBA) to be used.

Thanks. From reading those comments I should clarify my comment a bit more. I don't suggest they make any contact, I am just wondering if they have considered the idea of licensing. I think that broad sweeping software patents are a result of the patent system not truly understanding modern computers but I do think there is an important place for the patent system to protect developers of new technologies. Sometimes, I believe that the idea of licensing gets lost behind the abuse of software patents in general.

Have you considered the idea of licensing the patent from them?

He states in the book that the '4 hour of work' is just an arbitrary number. The title was used because his publisher was against his original title of 'Selling Drugs for Fun and Profit' and being such a self promoter he figured that working only 4 hours is something that would grab attention.

It's only on YC News that business plans are so black and white. The is no international standard on what sections, how many pages, or how many years into the future a business plan must be.

You do realize that these answers you suggest people should have amount to a business plan?

How is this evil?

The LeTouneau stuff is very interesting.

Your concerns over the ride quality for the wheel are addressed in the press release for the product from Michelin (I linked to it in another comment). The wheel will actually contain an active electrically driven suspension system. Michelin claims an extremely fast response time - just 3/1000ths of a second and all pitching and rolling motions are automatically corrected. I also believe that the idea that the wheel will not be able to accelerate as quickly to be unfounded. The same amount of weight it being rotated, as only the tire, which is roughly the same as any normal tire, is actually spinning.

These pictures give a far better idea of how the wheel is constructed:

Front - http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...

Back - http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...

I'm sure there are going to be plenty of complications with the design but it is really good to see large companies taking some initiative for innovation. They have already produced two concept cars with these wheels.

Here is the Michelin page for the Active Wheel: http://www.michelin.co.uk/michelinuk/AfficheServlet?Rubrique...

But for much more detail check out the press release (pdf): http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...