mgenzel

Am I the only one who's thinking about pricing of this deal?

Netflix market cap: $1.8 billion Amazon market cap: $35 billion

Wrt future prospects, Netflix is not dying, but is in fact at the forefront of digital delivery. They won't sell it cheaply. It would be one very-very expensive purchase.

Seems like it's time to get rid of domain names period :) Why not go back to numbers? Most people use search engines to get where they're going anyway. Who's with me? :)

Blackboard paint is cheaper. You can even mix it with other colors to make non-black colors. See: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/how-to/how-to-make-your-o... http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/another-color-twist-on-ch...

I don't see why you should feel _obligated_ to give two weeks' notice. Now, it's possible that you want to finish the project you're working on, or for some other reason you don't mind doing it. But, honestly, most of the time if you decided to quit, you're mentally checked out or even worse, hostile toward the company. And it's not as if two weeks is a long time, the employer can't get anyone to replace you that fast anyway. The company often has no obligation to give you any notice either. Now, you don't need to be flip about quitting, you can just say politely that you don't think it's working out for you, that you can't give 2 weeks notice because you need to use the time to take a break before the next gig starts, or that you won't be doing a good enough job or whatever. I think most normal people (co-workers) understand that you have to take care of yourself. That said, in my past I've given up up to six month notice, mostly because I've been lucky to work on great projects and with great people that I didn't want to undermine. But if you're not in that situation, I don't think that there are any _ethical_ considerations in quitting ASAP.

Until there's a controlled, replicable method, all these studies, approaches, genius ideas are just blah-blah-blah exercises in pretty correlations.

It's not about whether Flash is good or bad; or whether at some point in the future it's going to be outmoded. It's about the _fact_ that there are plenty of websites out there that do use Flash right now, and it would be, I don't know, kind of nice to be able to use them.

This makes no sense. You should instill good writing, yes, but good linking should respect the original title. I come across the same articles from different sources; it would be nice to be able to quickly understand that it's the same article (because of the identical title).

Frankly, hiring managers and recruiters have little time to decipher the resume. Standard formats improve the speed of cognitive processing. Even if you're the candidate of their dreams, they'll curse you for making them spend more time understanding that. And "remembering the candidate" is not necessarily a good thing: I still remember the resume from 1999 whose objective read: "Want to become the expert in Peoplesoft in 5 years", but not for flattering reasons, of course.

While his specific point is true, it is also true that delusion can be a valuable tool of progress (aka if we knew what having children is really like, the humankind may have died out). Obviously, you can't hash out a full-fledged system in a weekend, but you can get enough of a start that it pulls you in and makes you work on it after the weekend is done. Also, sometimes you can actually build a pretty sophisticated project if you have done enough of the pieces in the past. Of course, all of the above applies only to self-inflicted work; "managerial pressure" should be resisted :)

And if you don't 'date' it, it's a flag to the person who reads your resume anyway, that you're old (which is why you would do that). It's tough.

I heard opposite advice: e.g., spend more time talking about the product and less on the size of the market. And while yes, "Investors don't want you learning on their nickel", I do think they're more forgiving of very early-stage ventures (the right funds, of course).

I think the Internet has and will continue to have profound effect on how we interact with the information, and most likely, on our cognitive processes as well. It is unclear, however, whether the overall change is progress-positive, progress-negative, or progress-neutral. Also it is unclear what can be done to prevent the change: the genie is out of the bottle at this point.

On the topic of "The better you make the automation, the more difficult it is to guard against these catastrophic failures in the future, because the automation becomes more and more powerful, and you rely on it more and more." it's instructive to read the last story of Asimov's "I, Robot" called the "Evitable Conflict" in which the machines lead the Earth's progress.

Of course, it's to go along with the classic Web 2.0 BS Generator http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/

There's also web 2.0 logo, name & tagline (all together) generatorL http://www.blastone.com/games/generator/index.php

Pfeh. The guy lost me with "For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women". When I see an ERA amendment pass & when any woman running for office is not met with a sexist circus (like it was with Hillary Clinton or "omg she may have pms" Sotomayor), call me.

On that subject, an absolutely must-read book is "Hard To Be God" (by Strugatsky; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God ), an absolutely brilliant meditation on the whole Prime Directive issue (basic thesis: it's harder to bring in positive influence than it seems, thus the title)

I would also like to see how exactly they define "grumpiness". It could be that they view being argumentative, questioning, challenging assertions as being "grumpy", which would surely describe many of us.

Also, weird how they chose only Israelis to question. Check out this interesting study: "You Are Where You Edit: Locating Wikipedia Contributors Through Edit Histories": http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/publications/Lieberman_L...

I do sometimes wonder if the people from ancient civilizations could see what we think about their writing and tools and culture, whether they would just laugh out loud. "No, no, that's just a spoon! And that little squiggle? That's a curse word, you idiots!"

Did we meet last night at lolapps? :)

You, of course, realize that hard skills vs. soft skills has really little to do with it. I mean, it's not like factory workers are being snapped up right now. Or, you know, Ada programmers or something. It's really more about supply & demand (hah!).

I think there are different ways to approach thinking about an MBA degree. While it's true that MBA (often, but actually not always) doesn't give you hard skills (quants & opresearch guys would disagree!), it doesn't make the 'soft skills' useless. For me, the most valuable aspect of my program (granted, there are schools & there are, well, worthless schools, I'm quite biased) was learning about different aspects of business, hearing about problems other people/classmates have encountered & arguing heatedly, reflecting on my years of work & seeing additional angles & solutions, addressing practical problems with practical solutions (not all real problems can be solved with code, you know, although we can all wish :)

Of course, I think that the best MBAs are the ones who've actually been working on something real before they apply to the business school, and to be fair, that's what many business schools in fact encourage. Well, I can go on and on, maybe we can chat more about it when we meet. I won't convince you that MBA is a must, I don't believe that myself duh, but, just like Java, there are circumstances, independent of economy, in which it is warranted. :)

In fact, even if it is true that "the economy is turning more into skill-based economy" (let's see what it's going to be like in 10 years), it doesn't mean you don't need (granted, fewer) "soft-skillers". It's kind of like saying that because Internet allows disintermediation of content, you no longer need any mediators (although, of course, there are people who believe that, too).

would, in fact, make sense to translate some of these risks into metrics, and have a nice heatmap to look at daily.