netsp

Anyway, what I mean is that the OP messed up with registering his business.

I don't want to make online backups of my offline data, offline backups of my online data & all that mess. I just want my docs in my dropbox folder, edited with Google docs, Zoho, Word, OO or a hammer n chisel and still available to any of the others when I'm done. No uploading/downloading a mess of files and recording them on tape. If I want another backup, I just want to plug in Time Machine. That's how I do backups. Other people like to do them differently (why? Time Machine works great), they should be able to do their thing.

I don't want to upload/download files via the browser. I don't want files called G.Docs-old-new-good-partial.zip sitting around everywhere. I don't want to think about my files. I especially don't want to think about my files if some of them or on my machine, some of them or on Google, some of them some startup's servers. That last one is a real problem because I need to read Techrunch to hear about them going under in advance and transfer all the files to whatever new startup they're covering.

The cloud isn't replacing the desktop today. No one uses only Google docs or stores documents only in the cloud. People do both. They might always do both. I want a bridge.

"Over-engineering is poison. It's not like doing extra work for extra credit. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it."

There is a capitalist core though. I think that core says that the non-market system (governments, societies, etc.) need to make sure that things are free. Emergent order will take care of the rest. Incentives & feedbacks will make sure (via the mechanism described above) that transactions are profitable for all parties, that they are safe & that they are otherwise ethical. Honesty is usually included in this.

Again, when I say 'usually included,' it's hard to nail down what I mean. Most people have obviously never considered this particular aspect. They use think in more general terms. But the Capitalism-as-philosophy guys (Libertarians in the US, Austrian-schoolers or Liberals some other places), would consider honesty as something that emerges, part of capitalism.

Investors, on the other hand, play the game more regularly. It's impossible to keep the information from them long term. If they had to pay to come, they would need to be finding good investments. Startups don't have this feedback, at least not without things like public complaints.

There is such a thing as an immoral yet free transaction.

Rubbish. They are charging people to download Firefox. The reason they can do this is because people don't know it's free. If you approached these people & said, "do you want to buy access to our call center?" They would say no.

Protection against corruption/taking advantage is built in. Don't like it? Don't buy it.

Now I got a response that they want to extend a 'special invitation' to use their 'to register on our brand new community site' where I can get involved and maybe new chapters will materialise.

The timing seems pretty convenient. I suspect that the request/suggestion form was really a list building excercise for the community site. It's a Ning. Those things need to cross a substantial chicken-egg hurdle before they are any use to anyone.

I admit, there was no blatant lie. It isn't really exactly the same thing. But it is sending out feelers & building email lists. They could have also put up a big 'join our community' button on the site that led to an 'sorry, under construction' page after you "sign up." Maybe they did. It was a little bit sneaky. I still joined & even started a group. I'm not angry with them. I'll even mention it to others.

BTW: http://community.acumenfund.org/

The types of companies that get discussed on HN are usually the kind where both marketing & engineering are important enough to do a lot of damage and important enough for everyone to have an opinion about them.

You can top that up with the fact that the stuff that usually gets praise or abuse (eg product development) can often be claimed or pawned off by both engineering and marketing.

Who is responsible for the ipod nano video camera thing? Engineers?

Sometimes things are obvious. Google has awesome marketing, but the original dynamite was creating the awesome search engine and the momentum caused by gmail & maps & such. Facebook is, as far as I can tell, a marketing achievement. In both cases it was important that the non dominant factor didn't mess things, but it was a hurdle.

Apple or MSFT? You could argue both or neither. If you wanted to teach how to be like them, the classes would probably be called things like 'strategy' or 'leadership.' I'm not sure that any department has a monopoly here.

It might also be good to test several ideas with this method to decide which one to pursue. Again, they shouldn't be the only factor but all else equal, better fake conversion is better.

It isn't an accurate projection, but it is info. It is also a chance to get an understanding of the adwords environment, click costs, etc.

A lot of the problems to do with digital content is because it is trying to behave like it isn't digital content. The "rules" of lending a book in physical format are determined by physics, psychology, & the like. People ahve learned to live with these. The "rules" of lending an ebook are going to be completely artificial, even if they mimic the dead tree rules.

It's like trying to enforce a complicated regime of minimum orders per table that depends on the number of people, the days of the week, what items are ordered etc. That just makes people angry.