rdrimmie

I've been doing a lot of geo-related work lately and confounding latitude and longitude was a regular source of logic errors. Only useful for North America, but my mnemonic for lat/lng is "latitude has a positive attitude". It doesn't necessarily help when identifying which is which on a map, but when using them for calculating proximity or drawing polygons on a map it works every time.

Dropbox has the advantage of being the go-to solution for crossplatform developers. If I write a native app for iOS, Android and Windows Phone and OS X and Windows and want the data easily portable across all of them Dropbox is the obvious solution.

I don't think it's just a function of time. 3-5 questions could easily take 30 minutes to answer. A phone call is just such a larger imposition than email (for many). No time to think a solid response through, research your answer, start after supper finish after the kids are asleep, etc.

Email lets the respondent control the conversation, rather than the requestor.

Possibly useful personal experience: I had sell-out.com registered for about 10 years. For the past five years it pointed to a stale blog.

I was contacted about a month ago by a company that wanted it, and they offered $1000 US, which I rapidly agreed to.

I wasn't intentionally squatting it, it was one of those domains I registered on a whim for a personal project that I grew moderately attached to over time, but never did anything with.

The company I work for spent a bit of money protecting the namespace around our most recent product, and based on our CTO's experience buying unused and squatted domains, I say: walk away. Leave off with an email "If you ever want to get rid of it for $x, I will pay you that afternoon." Either they're willing to sell and will take you up on it, or are more interested in a cash grab and won't.

It creates a great path for employees to follow as well. You know exactly what you need to demonstrate to make it to the next level.

Steve McConnell (or more accurately, I suppose, Construx) with the Professional Development Ladder (http://construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=244) was an early advocate for this idea, and Spolsky has discussed it a couple of times as well.

Cash has limited motivational power, but it's akin to the physiological layer on the hierarchy of needs. If you're getting a shitty salary it's harder to give a damn about the success of the product or company.

That being said, also brilliant is the idea mentioned to let people exchange one or more tiers of compensation for stock if they so chose.

I'm the dumbfuck that originally posted the 160 hours number. The only thing I'll say in my defence is that it was written in October 2008, two years ago. It certainly didn't take into consideration the many hours of development that have been done since, and the hourly rate was based on actual searches I did on freelancer sites.

I wasn't actually high. Just stupid. If there were a way to 'unaccept' an answer I'd have done so long ago. The user 'schwa' corrected me long before chockenberry noticed.

For much of last century, when the legend of the Gillette model originated, razors were not plastic.

I love the conflict. I guarantee you that my answer has changed since becoming a father, too.

A bit of indulgent nit-pickery: My first inclination would just be to move the younger tree. It wouldn't add significant costs to the investment of building a new road.

Several independent game developers do this without the payback system. World of Goo and Machinarium are two examples of games available through all sorts of bundle packages and pay-what-you-like experiments.

They're also examples of developers who have declared 90%+ piracy, so I'm not sure that this anecdotal evidence has any value.

Marco also notes that the app has to contend with the user's expectation of what it should do. Which might not have any basis in reality. If an app doesn't do what a user expects, regardless of where that expectation originates, it earns the 'useless' designation.

There's also a lot of python-specific new developer knowledge out there, like the python version of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/).

Sounds more like an advisor than a cofounder. I'd look into typical advisor compensation and go at it from that angle.

I'm a big fan of this book. It's one of the rare technical books that is so well-written that it's a great read regardless of whether or not you're actually trying to use the technology.

The same principle of 'temperature matters'. Some things are better cold.

I don't know where you are, but one thing I'm noticing a lot of in this part of the world (Southern Ontario) is local, outsourced IT companies. GeekSquad, sort of, but independent generalists. You can help people figure out their desktop computers, and put together a small website for them and maybe program their phone system, etc. Any small business has a ton of tasks they could benefit from having a 'digital handy person' type of role.

So you could start one yourself, or look to the ones that already exist to see if they're hiring. Being a generalist, having experience with a lot of different disciplines, being self-taught those are all desirable qualities.

I also think that generalists make for good community managers, especially with a bit of experience developing and support. You're able to translate well and understand both the community's point of view and that of the developers.

With a few years of technical experience, if your resume isn't opening doors - for either experienced or entry level positions - I think it's worth considering some extra help. Consider a resume expert or consultant. Requires money outlay, so possibly hard to justify but you might be able to fake it out a bit by working with recruiters and getting their feedback. It is subpar, but free.

Google for 'Let's All Find Awesome Jobs', it's a cheap digital book that has a ton of great advice.

Be the parent you want to be. A lot of people are going to talk about what the best way to raise a kid is, but you are going to know your kid better than all of them, so do what is right for your family.

Dote on your wife. Give her a foot rub every night.

The burden of a child kind of weighs heavy at times - "holy crap I could serious fuck this kid's head up!" - but remember that most people grow up to be okay regardless of their parents. As long as you're a good and loving person so will your child be.

If you're like me, jokes about kids are going to become seriously unfunny for a few years. If you watch cop shows and dramas you'll notice a lot of kids dying or being threatened and where you might not have had those heartstrings to be tugged in the past, when they first get installed they are fiercely powerful.

My favorite book about childhood development is http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Going-There-Brain-Develop/dp/055... "What's Going On In There" which was written by a neurobiologist because she started thinking about what was happening when she was pregnant. I consider it the Hacker's Guide to your Kid's Brain.

My oldest is 4 now, he's about to start junior kindergarten. Seeing him (and my youngest who is 6 months) develop is fascinating and rewarding. Don't give up on your goals and dreams but remember that there's always going to be work waiting for you. Your kids are only kids for a while.

http://ask.metafilter.com prevents eternal september by intentionally making the sign-up process slightly difficult. Rough interface and a $5 fee for new accounts.

I know several people want hide their last names at conferences for privacy issues, and printing it small makes it easier. Doing the same for one's company also seems practical if you're concerned.

I disagree with the work ethic point, but I do think it's interesting and instead of both of us speculating would love to see some actual data.

There are a ton of dumbass people out there chugging away at grinding jobs to stay alive, and a ton of brilliant people sitting at their desks reading hacker news (not to imply that I'm brilliant; it's the rest of you I mean).

Hyperbole like "May spell the end of ..." immediately makes me dismiss that which is being discussed, same as 'x killer'.

That said, I like this idea. I have speculated on using a Surface for the same purpose and I think - especially when I'm sitting at a table waiting for my bill or realize I just got my food but forgot to ask for whatever-it-was - that it would be extremely useful. But who is going to bring me my whatever-it-was? The chefs?

This month you spent $100 on food, $300 on utilities including Internet access, and $60 on gas. Then we charged you $19.

Apple has long expressed that if you do not wish to be bound by the App Store's rules, use HTML5. "Creating a version of Pac-Man that runs nicely on the iPhone without App Store approval" is by no means a jab, subtle or otherwise, at Apple.

Using Flash for the sound might be.

A related data point is the Humble Indie Bundle, which is a pay-anything (including $.01) software bundle that is experiencing fairly heavy levels of piracy.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/05/humble-bundle-giv...

I think python, but of the three I only have first-hand experience in it and php. I think it depends on what languages you currently know, and which of them is the most different.

I started learning PHP in 2001, coming from web development in ASP3 written in VBScript. At the time, developing pages in PHP and VBScript was very similar, and it was really more a matter of learning the few syntax differences and the core library.

Python is a much different language than PHP and VBScript, and as a result working on learning it has made me a much better programmer and it has been a lot more interesting because I'm working with concepts that I might not otherwise cross paths with in my day-to-day programming and gives me a leg up as these concepts are added to php.

If you haven't already, please also consider learning javascript. There's a lot of nascent node.js webframeworks that you could start with.

Filling in a vendor's niche is about as old a business model as vendors and there has always, always, always been the risk of being replaced by a built-in solution.

It's got nothing to do with the vendors being hostile nor is it even remotely curious or in any way novel. It is the way industry works. An enterprising someone finds a niche and either grows the niche and the niche is either paved over or absorbed. Rinse repeat etc.

My father spent about 40 years managing a lab in a University and as soon as he was retired participated in starting a business doing the exact same thing. For one thing, the layers of red tape disappeared completely and instead of wrestling with people who didn't care about what he did he was out actually doing science. For another, he certainly wasn't ready to just hang around the house pruning the bushes for the next 30 years.

Almost all founder agreements - especially one signed by Cringley who has a lot of experience - is going to have ways for the board to get rid of a founder. Either outright firing, or a buy-out or something.

Just because a founder, for example, doesn't mean you don't have to come into work because you're busy at home eating cheetos and playing xbox (which is definitely not what Cringley did, but an extreme example of why you'd want such a clause).

It should absolutely be off by default. The way these things spread is one tweet that is your message, then the next tweet that says "sorry I didn't mean to post that". Just make a button or a checkbox that says "Tweet this" and lots of people will do it. The behaviour should be opt-in, just like email subscriptions.

I'm only a (very happy) user of WriteRoom, but my comments should also be taken with a grain of salt.

I find WriteRoom to be extremely pleasant, in a way that OmniWriter isn't. The experience of OmniWriter is nice, certainly, but it's not any more or less pleasant that WriteRoom. The pleasantness of WriteRoom comes from the obliteration of distractions. I can add nice imagery (which I don't) and a great soundtrack (which I do) on my own.

(To be clear, I don't think anything negative about Omniwriter, but it's not my kind of pleasant.)