motoko

Let's also imagine many Alans (corporate engineers) and Charles (hackers) and from this bigger sample, measure how consistently each approach produces an acceptable outcome.

It may be that the Charles, on average, produce better solutions with less resources than the Alans, but that individually, more of the Charles projects fail catastrophically.

Now imagine how good Charles would be if he could learn to cooperate and participate in a group like Alan's.

Let's also imagine how good Alan could be if he could learn to see past the inflated corporate policies, procedures, and checklists and focus on the crux of the problem.

Both excellent, I think. But further, let's imagine an organization that arbitrates the risk of each Charles by simultaniously working many cheap, risky Charles on the same problem and managing the results with an Alan-like process.

If the Charles are software startups and the Alan-like process is "the Internet," this could work.

Like how it took your competence to recognize the competence of the example?

Many people already live in sheds to save money. They are called "trailers."

+1 to ellyagg for the "stuffwhitepeoplelike.com" call

I've had success with NearyFreeSpeech.net, but I've had GoDaddy lock domains due to dubious legal complaints.

I recommend trying NearlyFreeSpeech.net and reporting in the registration that you chose them from recommendations at Hacker News.

If you do ever have a problem with a registrar, report the story here at news.ycombinator so that it can be archived.

Note: do NOT respond to legal threats. They are like spam ---you respond, now it's known that you respond to threats, and now will be sued. Never assume good faith. If somebody sends you a letter about their trademark, for example, and you call their office to ask about it in good faith, that other company can claim that you said anything over the phone, and you will have to defend yourself in court otherwise.

Winning a lawsuit is very expensive for a small business. You do not want to win.

I disagree. I like Gmail's email interface best, and I like that I can scan many messages quickly ---even on small screens.

But Google publishes a solution: the Google Apps API. Also, since it's email, you can simply import, forward, or sync your Google mail into any other mail application that you like better.

This looks like a troll post, but this is actually good advice. Don't try to force a good Ruby environment on Windows. Instead, merely edit your source code on Windows, and use PuTTy to SSH into a Linux machine that runs your development Ruby on Rails installation. This will also help enforce best practices like keeping your source code in source control instead of hacking it bits-to-metal on your local machine.

Google application suite ---especially gmail (search and worry-free attachments that appear on my iPhone). I've been happy with the recent task list and calendar resource additions, too.

8. Health care administration will be the fastest-growing sector. (The panelists were so bored by this trend they didn't even discuss it.)

Warning Bells

Information technology venture capitalists didn't "want" to discuss "the fastest-growing sector" which constitutes the transmission, storage, and processing of structured information?

If Apple or any other company wanted to use Twitter, why not create free accounts or pay Twitter for advertising like anyone else could without first spending $700,000,000.00?

I don't understand these "acquisitions" from a business perspective other than as an excuse to legally shuffle money from a big company to mutual investors and executives. Am I missing something?

I see what you're getting at, but in the context of computers and computer labs, again: it's the environment of a preconfigured lab that's valuable, not so much the physical medium of the computer itself.

Likewise, a library, a bookstore, and a bookshelf are specific environments that could never be replaced by e-books ---even if / when society collectively concludes that e-books are a superior and preferred medium for consuming book-like content.

This service didn't work for me, but I'm voting it up in hopes that attention will help this startup as I'd like it to someday.

Because lab computers can be configured with all the necessary software and support students need to do work in an environment conducive to doing work. It's the software, support, licensing, environment, configuration, maintenance, convenience, peripherals, bandwidth, security, environment, and unity of purpose that's most valuable... not the physical computer itself.

When every student has paper, why print books?

True, but it's the easiest to measure, and so it is.

As for not "hard problems," there's nothing disreputable about completing an achievable unit of concrete work for your own edification and profit. Maybe hard problems are hard because they don't fit into anyone's idea of an "achievable unit of concrete work." So, earning experience and capital by solving smaller problems to create tools which may help solve bigger problems is a respectable and intelligent approach to solving hard problems. On the contrary, in my experience, an obsession with a "great ambitious idea" without an obsession for solving an innumerate small, immediate problems which arise from that great idea is the "most important ingredient" for non-productive, self-deluded thrash.

As for YC companies: I pay for Wufoo and Dropbox. I also like Virtualmin, but I have yet to purchase a paid subscription. I will when I deploy my next intra-company web application since I can then claim that I outsourced tech support. Then, I can blame Joe to my coworkers when there are problems with the server. >:) The free blame is worth the extra few dollars a month.

I understand the burnout from the constant cheerleading in the push press. So, unsubscribe from the news. If something is important, you'll learn about it in a few weeks by word of mouth or when you search for it to learn something specifically.

However, while the "same old share, sync, discover, publish stuff" seems trite to us in technology, it is still a miracle of technology from a historical perspective. I mean: wow, you can send any information anywhere anytime immediately for nearly free. I don't think the applications for that deep magic could be fully exploited yet.

I've noticed that newspapers (unhelpfully) will directly link to the home page of a university, but rarely link to commercial websites which they feature. I think this is an editorial policy to artificially maintain a veneer of journalistic impartially, but the effect amounts to lipstick on a submarine.

You also get a bonus 50GB for a small $10/mo donation. That is a 200x improvement over cobbling invitations between your friends and email aliases, and it directly funds the people who build and operate the service you enjoy.

My gut impression is that this is a good program for recent graduates near Atlanta, but I think that enrollment in this program is good in the same way that attending a regional community college is good. It's real, but it's obviously a compromise.

Also, "hyper-excited" tone and over-selling of basic web functionality (e.g. strategic web content management == WCM?) makes me suspicious. Starting a start up ---especially with little experience almost no capital--- seems extremely stressful and demands an extreme focus on reality. This cheerleading marketing may work well for corporate sales, but I fear that it will be a toxic distraction to start ups interested in <$20,000 capital in Atlanta.

I predict a high throughput of web media and software consulting companies from this fund...

Are there plans for adding PostgreSQL?

No, I disagree. The function of a resume isn't to represent you, it's to qualify you for further relevant attention. Thus style may disqualify you without justifying your relevance unless the position itself requires style. If it does, then what you should be submitting is a portfolio and an audition.

This is congruent with why it would be offensive to ask for a resume from somebody you know well. Somebody you know well would have already qualified for your attention some time in the past, and asking for a resume would trivialize that relationship.

I can vouch for Kevin. Nobody I know works so hard to invest small amounts of money to make moderately larger amounts of money simply to avoid work explicitly labeled as "work."

Please consider revising your comment.

Jay,

What people are trying to communicate is that they don't judge that you are offering value. It's a possible and valid answer to your question that you have to consider: that you ad is good, but your opportunity is bad.

That doesn't help you launch your business, so how about this:

What you seem to need to do is pay a contractor to build you a web application you have designed.

Think of this as building out an empty strip mall unit into a cafe for fulfill your dream of owning a coffee house. You have a general idea, and with your good credit, you can lease the space, but you need somebody with skills and experience to do the build out: build a bar, install coffee machines, plumbing, electric, internet, interior design, funishing... etc.

Assume you have plenty of cash and some rudimentary experience outfitting commercial real estate. Then this is straightforward: you request bids, hire a contractor, they do everything you want, you pay them, and cafe business is entirely owned by you. When the contractors are done, they are gone, though you are always welcome to repeat the process of you paying them for new work to maintain or expand your business. You will probably learn something about negotiating contracts based on over-optimistic sales projections, but oh well, that's life.

So, this will be your general experience if you hire a web application contracting firm.

But what if you don't have the money to hire somebody to do the work, and you can't do the work yourself? Now you are in troubled territory for which there is no MBA formula...

This seems to be you. Here are some example scenarios, still following the cafe analogy, that could work and have respectable expectations of success:

* You work with your family or very best friend who can help you do the work because they love you. They get some equity, but it's "your" business, and they respect that. Maybe the cafe goes on to be part of the family business.

* You save your money until you can pay somebody to do the work.

* You get a small business loan from the bank to do the work. (PS: off-topic, but please do not allow your friends and family to co-sign your small business loan if you really care about them...)

Now you can't do any of the above... and now we're getting into shady territory of almost certain failure:

* Reminded of stories of people who seemingly helped each other for free (see above), you convince "some guy / some kid" who "worked in construction / seems really handy" that the two of you will finally Achieve the American Dream and that together you have a shot at making TONS of money by him doing your work. You can't pay him, but you give him some "equity," and "that's ok, you'll be rich when this gets huge if we all work really hard."

news.ycombinator is successful because it's first the web forum for YCombinator program participants. "Trimming" works (civility and killing fluff stories) because what remains is a community of vetted YCombinator members and their friends.

Briefly: based on anecdotes, some may be more creative if they psychologically attribute their creativity outside their ego

This is true for git, too. However, I don't know of any git command like "svn export" that doesn't also pull the .git directory. The working solution seems to be to simply delete the .git directory after a clone ---preferably in some nice deploy script --- in conjunction with appropriate *nix file and Apache permissions.

Right, which is a proxy for where you went to school and my disclaimer about wealth and aristocratic connections.

The rule of life: Runescape xor ____________

No, because education is an important marker of social class. Where you went to school, for how long, and what you studied defines who you are and where you belong in the social hierarchy in the United States absent aristocratic relations or extreme wealth.

I agree that theory is more appropriate than specific tool training at university, but it's an exaggeration that web technologies are necessarily an afterthought.

Bill Gates, 2004 "Two years from now, spam will be solved."

This came true. The problem was that email inboxes were inundated with spam, but now free spam filters are good enough to filter almost all spam with extremely few false negatives. (e.g. gmail) Who cares what volume of email traffic is spam?