nopassrecover

Yeah I did, thanks for picking that one up.

I think I might just buy Good Calories, Bad Calories after reading this. It might not tell me anything I haven't learned indirectly through other writers but if it's written as well as this blog post that will justify its value alone.

Looking forward to the new book incidentally, and hoping it isn't a content-less and repetitive discussion of magazine clippings as this kind of book can often be (I have no reason to suspect it will be, beyond bad experiences with other books).

In Australia we have free health care but not dental. Dental is often an exceptional case in most healthcare plans as well. It would be nice to not have to worry about that any longer.

I'd be interested to know what proportion of dentistry is due to decay, particularly with the advent of chlorinated water. You'd possibly still need checkups for gum diseases.

OT: Why was the Amazon link downvoted? Isn't it generally accepted practice to include an Amazon link, or post one if the OP forgot?

I sense a decent money generator for the startup fund in this idea (not that they need it). This would be invaluable and highly desired advice and I'm going to look into getting a copy of the TechStars book.

This has been posted before and referenced many times. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719408

In fact, the particular use of parameters in the URL you have posted is unusual and non-standard to me. Is this an effort to boost referrer links or something similar?

Agreed, see Weber's focus on government legitimacy. In particular, government's role is to hold a monopoly on the use of force.

You've never used the term "stack"? Its one of the more intuitive programming terms.

"Microsoft, which had $5.41 billion in profit in the most recent quarter, hasn’t yet paid any damages to I4i. The unit that sells Office is Microsoft’s biggest, with $5.13 billion in sales in the quarter that ended Sept. 30."

Should that be read as an incidental fact (i.e. Microsoft's software sales are 5.13 of 5.41 billion) or does Office really account for that much of Microsoft's income?

Without more technical details the patent seems arbitrary to me (I thought the same at the time I first heard about it) but I would argue prior use shouldn't prohibit patents either as it encourages patents before development (indeed any beta software would then not be later patentable which would hurt a lot of startups who release before investment):

"Microsoft argued in defense that I4i had included its innovation in a product it sold to a client more than a year before it filed its patent application. That prior use would have rendered the invention ineligible for patenting under federal law."

A school has an entire staff of administrators and teachers, and they can't manage to allow students to choose their own courses rather than pre-allocating them?

I agree - universities often (depending on your degree) allow you the freedom to choose courses of various difficulty across various faculties to suit your interests and skills. This doesn't seem like a massive extension of that.

Apple do a lot of refurbishing, and I can't imagine replacing a plastic case is going to set them back much.

Depends on the scope of patents and trademarks.

This wasn't lite enough for you?

Well noone will beat Yahoo's effectively $5.7 billion domain purchase of broadcast.com.

It's just a matter of if the number of running days you sacrifice by spending this money and the lost other opportunities you could spend the money on (e.g. PR, design, a new dev) are outweighed by the likelihood of the new domain bringing you income.

Always worrying when someones working on a similar thing to you. Or validating..

Except last I checked you couldn't include people in existing threads.

Your problem is then either a) people should be dishonest when describing communal people or b) communal people don't have useful skills.

Teamplayer sounds a better description than assertive (euphemism for "hard to get along with")

Or, you know, women might on average actually be more kind, communal and tactful hence why their recommendation include these terms...

Men might on average also be more ambitious and outspoken.

This could be attributed to research suggesting women value interpersonal relationships more than men and that men take greater risks than women (hence terms like outspoken, assertive and daring).

Great to hear - look forward to it

The thing is, if it's trivial it should take a moment to answer (even if they look puzzled). I find when they can't answer the simple question it's because you knew this was a potential hole (which is why you asked it) and they're (even subconsciously) unsure about the implications of what you're asking.

Idea: great, execution: no idea?

I'm just directed to a Google Docs form asking why you must host me? It kind of implies that you'd rather not host me, but if I have to strong arm you then it might happen..

What is the pricing? The details of the hosting? What's going on here?

Fair enough you're in beta, but at least give me an idea about why I should invest time in the beta i.e. how is this easier than standard hosting, and what kind of hardware will my app have access to etc.

Hmm my relevant theory is a little sketchy, but there are FSMs that aren't modellable by regex right? (e.g. Nested tags).

It's only an investment if you plan to use it later for some other purpose than suing people that turn an idea into reality and actually contribute realisation of that idea to society. As it stands society will never benefit from most inventions unless a "big evil company" "steals" the idea (through their own research presumably) and turns it into reality.

Care to substantiate that? For instance, IMDB's facts are it's business, which is why some of those facts are reserved for paying members. Likewise, the fact Amazon has free public reviews is a big reason that people visit Amazon, just as the subjective blog posts of 37 Signals contribute significantly to their success.

His autobiography is fantastic too.

I can only comment on my Virgin Blue (low but not cutthroat budget Australian airline) experience but I have to say that the company has completely embodied the Branson attitude as described in his books. For instance we've been an hour late to a flight (that was fortunately delayed) and not only did they let us on the plane, but they managed to let us check in an unexpected baggage item (they security cleared it of course) - I have no idea what the usual domestic American carrier is like but this rule-bending on favour of the customer and common-sense (humans at all levels to paraphrase Branson) is unheard of on other (particularly traditional) carriers where, for example, you can lose your flight without refund if you are only 25 minutes early to your flight instead of 30 minutes.

Some other comparison points:

- "Web check-in" allowing you to arrive anytime up to the boarding of the plane (if flying with purely carry-on luggage) instead of having to arrive an arbitrary time before departure because of inefficient passenger processing.

- Friendly, bouncy and joking flight staff versus off-putting and critical drones who seem put out at the slightest request.

- Modern aircraft with simple amenities like screens for every seat versus tired old planes from the days where lack of competition and government monopolies dominated the industry.

- Reasonable fares without sacrificing quality versus either dated but comparable quality at a higher price or true "budget" where you sacrifice both quality and patience for a price that is often pretty close after hidden fees (e.g. A fee for booking, a fee for paying and a fee for paying via credit when this is the only accepted option).

It's funny - when they are printing a magazine I'm like wow great because I feel they've added value but when they're charging for the digital PDF (and it's a nothing charge let's face it) I feel like they are almost exploiting other's creativity (who I assume has been donated with permission?).

Off topic, but you're building a like-system (I have a part-time hobby one I've been sort of working on too) and I just wanted to wonder how you decided to go ahead?

The biggest concern I had was that the market is saturated with solutions that don't work because of disinterest, and anything I made could be beaten well-enough by Facebook in a good week's work. Sure I had a couple of edges but I couldn't spot the edge that would fix everything, and when I found a local competitor (I live in a pretty small city with minimal startups) I was convinced that everyone must be working on this.

So.. long story short I'd love to hear how you decided this was the thing to work on and how (without giving too much away) you hope to overcome the problems for your product's sector.