tpatke

From the link above - the products were not part of the acquisition.

A big part of the problem is differing degrees of technical sophistication. Both in the design of applications and the understanding of where problems exist. One person sees the need for photo sharing, and the other doesn't even understand they have a "photo problem".

The author hints at good point - is the browser going to be around in 10 years? The trend definitely seems to be cloud + rich client. In that case, is the browser needed?

I bet the guys behind CouchSurfing are kicking themselves about now. http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/29/couchsurfing-deletes-itself...

Always keep a backup of your database! :-) In this case, I think it is pretty clear the execution is worth a heck of a lot more than the idea.

Bitcoin is a market which has buyers and sellers. Just because one more idiot is willing to buy $10, or $1000 for a coin does not mean there is a market to SELL $50M worth.

This market sounds easy to get into and hard to get out of - especially in a hurry.

...saying that. I think the value of a bitcoin is probably going to go up. Everyone loves a bubble.

To summarize: Berlin has a lot of weird people and it is cheap to live there. Therefore, it will the next startup capital of Europe.

Hmmm... Sounds like the author had a good time in Berlin and wanted to say something nice. Don't think I will pack my bags just yet though.

This is a good point. Of course - for a banker it is not an opinion it is a full time job and at 7% they are very well compensated for it.

I agree with point #2. I use karma points when scanning comments and read a selection of "pre-filtered" comments. ...user names don't provide much value and I am always slightly disappointed when the most popular comment was made by a popular user.

Valuing ideas should not be a popularity context.

Where is the fail over? If ever a system needed 99.9999...

I assume this is pre-recorded and IBM would have cancelled it if they didn't like the outcome.

Maybe it is just me, but I am really uncomfortable with the term "winners"? What did they win? Who "lost"?

Not sure if that was ment to be a joke - but it's pretty funny. I wonder if MSFT would agree? :-)

Nobody has mentioned acquisition. I think it is safe to say that MSFT would be interested in FB at 50B. 100B starts to look like real money and it is hard to know who would be interested...

I like the way this was prefixed. "Coding Horror:" ...works for me.

Techcrunch sucks. But its opinion is very important and there is often useful information in the write up.

...but I HATE the regurgitation of Techcrunch (and CodingHorror) links here on Hacker News. How about prefixing links with the site:

[Techcrunch] Twitter Twitter Twitter :-)

Using it.

Name a company other then MSFT which spend BILLIONS every year building a development platform.

How can anyone suggest that after 20 years of billion dollar investments including contributions from the top minds in computer science - that Ruby is the better PLATFORM?

It is not about the language, it is about the platform.

btw: I have full java certification and work full time as a java developer. Java sucks.

To be honest. That event just doesn't interest me at all. The speakers are not going to say anything that is not already on the web. ...and if they do, it will be on the web the day after.

I want to meet hackers. The best way to do that is probably over coffee. Not in the context of someone delivering a speech.

I am working with online storage as well. I see it as a smaller part of a bigger system. Get in touch - it would be good to swap stories.

Cool - sign me up!

In London. Working on collaboration software.

If anyone has the leadership ability to organize a meetup - I would be very interested.

http://www.jettask.com/