tom_rath

I didn't dismiss/refute/claim anything or intend to start yet another global warming flame war. I'm probably as familiar with that research as you are and I'm not refuting it.

If other planets are warming/cooling then something is responsible for it. If it's not the sun, then it's something else related to planetary environments with which we are not familiar. Studying that would be A Good Idea, regardless of where people stand on global warming, because examining Earth alone just gives us a single data point.

What's happening on Mars? Does it parallel the changes we're seeing on Earth to some degree? What's happening in Jupiter's atmosphere to bring about such a dramatic change in a short period of time?

Could we see a similar dramatic change on this planet?

Please don't bring that politicized stuff into the discussion. That's a different flame war entirely.

If Jupiter is warming/cooling or Mars is warming/cooling, then something has to be responsible for it, and it sure isn't human activity.

If not the sun, then what? Something about planetary environments we're likely interested in learning more about, right?

Yes. For one, there's that big ol' fusion furnace in the middle of the place that's tossing out a variable amount of energy as time goes on.

Examining the weather of other planets would help explain if solar activity or other factors are affecting planetary temperatures more than recent human actions.

Do we have sufficient data to conclude that other planets are not warming? How far back does our accurate, consistent measurement go? Years? A decade or two?

I'm not sure we have sufficient data to conclude anything right now. We know astoundingly little about the neighbourhood we live in.

Actually, we probably do want to care about that. We know Earth's environment is changing but be don't really know why. Our planet is a single data point in the solar system, which makes analysis a little difficult.

Is Mars getting warmer or colder? Is Jupiter? Why is Jupiter's atmosphere visibly changing? If all other planets in the solar system are getting warmer/colder, shouldn't we expect Earth's temperature to change as well?

It's like a bright neon sign flashing "Clearly Explained Reason for Increased Solar System Exploration", but the space agency budget folks will likely ignore it and attempt to gain public support through some asinine vision quest thing instead.

It's the unfriendliness of the editor_s_ which has been the problem in my experience.

When someone goes through the trouble of creating a well-cited article only to have it deleted for being 'not notable', they're unlikely to bother again. If there's a Wikipedia issue to resolve, it's the deletionists and the strange environment which encourages their behaviour.

You misunderstand how evolution works. It is not a progression towards perfection.

You're conflating biological evolution with creationism / 'intelligent design'.

We're the species currently dominating a niche.

Calling anything the 'pinnacle' of evolution implies some sort of progress towards perfection. Evolution does not work that way.

Estimated selling prices for lunar He3 are around $6-10 million per kg (with the commercial viability of even that figure being pretty optimistic), so I'm going to go with 'no'.

When you've become your planned '10-year self' and are running a company, you'll find that there is no up-side to giving a no-hire an honest reason for your decision and plenty of down-side for doing so. As an example here, the binary decision not to hire you as an employee has created such a grudge that, almost two years later, you're still bitter enough to compose a rant against the company -- even though you never set a foot inside the place!

How bad would your rant have been if you were told "you're just not strong in <certain knowledge you thought you had cased>" or "a colleague told us that you were exceptionally difficult to work with in high-pressure situations and often became bitter if you didn't get your way"? What would the up-side have been for the company telling you these things? Wouldn't your bad-mouthing have just become worse, with your rant here (and elsewhere?) even nastier?

Yes, it would be nice if we could all tell no-hires exactly what they need to work on, but it is a very rare person who would say "Thanks for the rejection! That's awesome feedback and I'll tell everyone how you've managed to make me a better developer!"

Of course, one of the first things they did was add a prominent "Send your feedback to Google!" link so customers could tell them exactly what they liked and disliked about the service.

Right?

It always bugged me how Rumsfeld was slagged for that statement. I found it a very clear explanation of the difficulty in assessing a chaotic environment.

Time travel would be spiffy, but how easy is it to contact the Buzz engineers now?

If you've ever dealt with Google "technical support" (even if you're a customer who shovels them buckets of cash each week) you'll find that it's nearly impossible to reach an actual human being who can help you.

Convoluted as it is, getting a blog post ranked top in Hacker News seems the easiest (only?) way to get a genuine Google issue addressed. I hope they address this one AND create an actual means of contacting the people who are supposed to be running the place.

Whatever they're up to, their logo certainly seems excited about it.

It actually does less than nothing.

Since an e-petition site like the one linked gives people opposed to an issue the impression that they've accomplished something, those people are that much less likely to do something substantive to resolve the issue they're concerned about [Citation_Needed -- I couldn't be bothered to find it].

So, less is actually done to oppose the issue than if the site never existed in the first place. It actually helps those who are in favour of the issue opposed.

E-petitions aren't useless: They're worse than useless.

An e-peititon is going to do nothing. This nonsense distracts people from actual effort and helps bills like this get passed.

If you want to make an impact, the minimum you should do is write a letter to your MP, on paper, sign it and send it to them by post. Letters and phone calls (but particularly letters) are the currency your MP uses to gauge public opinion. Use them.

A business which "...generates single-digit or low double-digit millions in revenue..." is "a lifestyle business"?!?!

I thought lifestyle businesses were small craft or bespoke software development shops which allowed an individual to earn modest revenue while following their lifestyle of choice.

A few million dollars per year in revenue provides one awesome lifestyle!

You do lay off at that level if there's a mis-match between what a company is wanting and what the person was hired to deliver.

If Microsoft's "evangelist" roles are changing, it makes sense to dismiss those folks who previously worked towards those old objectives, since those objectives are no longer being targeted.

One is 'fired' due to incompetence. Another is 'laid off' due to a change in company priorities, direction and resource allocation.

Laid off, not fired.

That might sound pedantic, but there's a big difference between the two.

Nope. You can make tons of cool stuff and have an impact with loads of 'vision' as an employee, but you're not an entrepreneur if you're taking a paycheque and instructions from someone else.

Nice story, but it sounds more like a pet project which landed him a job rather than a company which was acquired.

He states "With Automattic, I am still an entrepreneur", but he's really not: He's an employee and his objective (to have a job again before he was 29) indicates that's his lifestyle preference.

Entrepreneurship isn't about finding a 'job' at another company, it's about making that company.

If you only wanted to evaluate their product, why didn't you use the free trial available for download? I just checked that site now for the first time myself and it was pretty obvious how to get one.

Refunds cost time and money to process and are a demoralizing pain in the tail (fwiw, we provide our rarely requested refunds immediately with no hassle and no questions asked) and a purchase with an immediate request for a refund typically screams 'pirate'.

Your opinions seem belligerently set in place, so all I can offer is the Independent Software Developer's Curse: "May you have customers who act just as you do".

I didn't see the instructions either.

Everyone's brain knows a block of text in the right-side column of a web page is an ad and provides nothing useful to the task at hand.

If your business has no presence in the United States you should not need to pay any taxes to that government. This topic comes up frequently on the BoS board: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz and a quick search there should provide a ton of resources.

If in doubt, consult an accountant.

Software start-ups should in particular note: If you're selling B2C and your target market is technically savvy, the folks who will pirate and distribute your work are considered heroes by many you've hoped to sell to.

Except they're not giving their product away for free, they're only offering complimentary 'Kool Aid'.

Yeah, because the most likely thing for pirates to do when they come into a bundle of loot is sail to the middle of nowhere and spend a few years engineering crafty traps beneath which they will permanently store their cash.

Outside of novels, movies and video games, pirates didn't bury their spoils: They spent it. The only treasure to be found in stories like these comes out of the pockets of the gullible souls who search for it.

If you don't get word-of-mouth advertising, your product isn't worthy.

4chan. Even more spartan and insanely popular.

You're thinking of advertising rather than marketing as a whole.

Think of marketing as the social component of design. You wouldn't start coding an application before you had at least a rough design of what its functionality would be, right? So why would you start designing a product before you identified who is going to use it and what they will be using it for? Marketing answers those questions.

In rough, marketing identifies your market: Who will be using your product and why. Your application / business is then built using that knowledge.