Linkseed/hacker_news_with_comments · Datasets at Hugging Face

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49,889	49,662	graham-miln	Good Automatic FAQ Style User Support Software?	staunch	A FAQ is warning your user support material is failing.Consider rewriting, augmenting, or restructuring your user guide. How about adding a 'getting started guide', assistants, wizards, or sample walk through documents?Visit http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/ and browse the posts on technical support and manuals.Depending on your users, the very acronym FAQ is a hurdle. The majority of potential users have no idea, or desire to learn, what FAQ means.With every significant release of DssW Power Manager http://www.dssw.co.uk , we have been improving, refining, and adding to the user experience. The core functionality has remained fairly constant but sales increase with each release; more 'get' the concept thanks to better documentation and experience.Hope this helps,Graham	I want to build up a strong FAQ page so I don't have to repeatedly answer the same questions and users can help themselves. I like what FAQ-O-Matic[1] does, but it's an old, ugly, and creaky program at this point. I'm tempted to write my own, but not if there's some good out there. Anyone know of something nice?1. http://faqomatic.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/427.html	0	4	2007-09-04 07:27:00 UTC
49,890	49,860	hacker64	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	Using RoR is like taking a loan. You build it fast, but then spend a lot of time fixing it.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	8	24	2007-09-04 07:30:10 UTC
49,894	49,860	jamongkad	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	Just curious do people still hack in ColdFusion? I haven't heard from that language in a looong time.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	14	24	2007-09-04 07:41:05 UTC
49,898	49,784	SwellJoe	Merge Wufoo and Weebly	binnymathews	The guys in the companies have met, though I don't think either are looking for a merger. I'm sure they've discussed "synergies".They are, despite appearances to the contrary, being used in very different markets, as epi hints at. Wufoo is very heavily tilted towards business users, with a client list including a nice little chunk of the Fortune 500 (and Virtualmin, Inc. as we use it for our "get a T-shirt" form). Weebly is heavily favored by individuals. I don't know of any big businesses using Weebly, but they've got like a billion people using it for personal websites (I've setup one, and I might even move my personal blog over).Wufoo did just add a very simple checkout module, which may be the thing that pushes them into the mainstream with individuals selling small goods. But I dunno if that's how it's shaking out. I suspect it is small businesses and organizations, like always, but now they're collecting payments for their field trips or bake sales or T-shirts or whatever it is they're organizing with the form.	I think it makes a lot of sense to merge / combine wufoo and weebly (both Y Combinator funded) into a single company - 1. Both address the same pain of creating online pages without having to write code.2. Most people creating websites inevitably have to create some kind of form on their website. 3. The combined company's services is probably much more appealing to a buyer (maybe some online store manager) than two individual form and web page creation companies.Any thoughts ?Thanks	1	4	2007-09-04 07:54:08 UTC
49,899	49,860	fauigerzigerk	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	Java is definately a viable choice, no matter how unpopular it currently is. It has some real advantages over Ruby, the most important being speed, which translates into productivity if the alternative is mixing C and Ruby. Another advantage is proper unicode support. I still decided against Java because I feel that meta programming could be that great enabler of the next productivity revolution. A revolution that smarter people than me have experienced ages ago. Having explored Java to some extremes, I know that many of the complexities of something like J2EE are down to the lack of powerful language internal meta programming facilities.Why not JRuby? Because right now JRuby is even slower than C based Ruby and Ruby 2 will have a virtual machine too, which doesn't have to concern itself with anything other than serving Ruby. Yes, Java has a lot of libraries. But how many of those am I really using in my startup? Quite a few, and it does take me some time to figure out good alternatives for Ruby. But at the end of the day the library issue doesn't make a big difference in my case.The only thing that really concerns me about the popular dynamic languages is raw speed for algorithmic stuff. Yes I do need that for what I'm doing. If lisp had any momentum whatsoever I'd gladly jump onto something like sbcl because it has all the metaprogramming facilities and it's as fast as C.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	1	24	2007-09-04 07:55:26 UTC
49,900	49,860	elad	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	We're using both Java and Ruby. We started out with Ruby and Rails, which worked great for the prototype but we have some very processor-intensive operations and the Ruby code won't scale. Rewriting these in Java produced an instant 100-fold performance improvement, so going forward we're doing that stuff in Java. On the other hand, we have some text-processing stuff where Ruby really shines. Having used Ruby for that I'd never go back to Java for such tasks.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	9	24	2007-09-04 07:58:55 UTC
49,909	49,691	Tichy	Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?	davidw	I think if the ads come from the same server as the web site, AdBlocker is screwed? So I guess that is what is going to happen - which is good, because it reduces the amount of tracking the advertising companies can do on the user.	null	7	13	2007-09-04 09:10:50 UTC
49,910	49,860	davidw	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	Java often feels like "playing fetch" to me:http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2006/11/23/playing-fetchIn other words, there's so much makework that a small team is at a disadvantage compared to a bigger team, which is not the kind of playing field a startup wants to be on.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	13	24	2007-09-04 09:17:55 UTC
49,911	49,860	balaji	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	www.dimdim.com I think these guyz use Java.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	19	24	2007-09-04 09:18:34 UTC
49,912	49,834	adamsmith	Equity for lawyers?	tony_wonder	The firm should do the work for deferred cash payment. I.e. they do $25k of legal work, and you pay up when you get real money. You obviously need to look credible / have good intros / etc.They shouldn't get equity because they don't _really_ add that much value at an early stage. It will also look bad to investors if you give equity to people who shouldn't have it. Work on your product, ask questions later.Set up an S corporation if you incorporate yourself.	It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.	1	7	2007-09-04 09:19:31 UTC
49,913	48,944	tzury	If you were to write Wikipedia today...	ph0rque	This question can be answered only by Wikipedia IT since they are with the experience with Wikipedia needs in all aspects.	If you were to write Wikipedia today using available languages and frameworks, what language/framework would you use? And why?	4	3	2007-09-04 09:29:12 UTC
49,917	49,860	mattmaroon	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	We may use java for a tiny fraction of our startup (back end of the live game server) for the performance benefits. Does that count?	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	10	24	2007-09-04 09:51:47 UTC
49,921	49,860	tomh	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	We use Java - although, to be quite honest we were a PHP shop starting out, but then we got a big-league client who said they wanted a system built from scratch and, oh by the way, "it has to be in Java". Four years later, we have a mid-size application (80K lines) that operates well and is attracting more clients, though I often feel we have stepped into a few 'pits of despair' while building it. There are several 1500-line servlets which grind away on certain tasks, for example.The upside is, we are now putting out our I18N'ed version of the product and it was very easy to produce a version of the app in a Unicode-based language, which will probably land us several more clients this year.In short, Java can be great and there are a lot of things out there to help you build an app, but it only works as long as you keep the code clean and exercise your own discipline to keep from getting too sloppy. Otherwise, you can wind up with code that needs a rewrite from day one.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	2	24	2007-09-04 10:16:13 UTC
49,923	49,860	rzwitserloot	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	http://tipit.to/ is mostly GWT on the front and all java on the server.CF is crap. Groovy is okay, but not -that- great. I'd go with jython or jruby instead if you're thinking of using Groovy.Scala is absolutely great. It's my favourite language. tipit's server side isn't Scala based only because I wasn't fully aware of Scala when we started out. Scala is functional in theory but even with a very imperative background you can write your code and slowly get used to solving problems 'the functional way', which does come off a bit cleaner (e.g. using case classes).	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	6	24	2007-09-04 10:33:19 UTC
49,925	49,860	aaroniba	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	It's important to differentiate "Java" from the "JVM". Java is a programming language that gets compiled to bytecodes, and the JVM is an execution environment that runs bytecodes. (There is some java-language-ish stuff in the bytecode spec, but for the most part you can treat them separately).In my opinion, Java is a clumsy language but the JVM is awesome. Static typing and lack of first-class functions or easy data types make Java programs verbose and annoying to change. The JVM, on the other hand, is fast, portable, well-specified, and there are a ton of libraries that run on it.To have the best of both worlds, you can use the JVM to run a more dynamic language (not Java)! There are many projects to bring different languages to the JVM, but my favorite is Rhino, which compiles JavaScript to bytecodes. Rhino is also what powers my favorite web framework, Helma.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	0	24	2007-09-04 10:40:09 UTC
49,929	48,739	chmac	How does karma work?	chmac	For example, this item has 24 points, but the user is brand new and has only posted 1 item which has no comments. Where does that karma come from? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785	How does the karma and points system on this site work? I can't figure it out. Do people with more karma generate more points per vote? How are the points generated, I've seen some comments which are worth 17 points, where does that number come from?	1	4	2007-09-04 11:15:07 UTC
49,933	49,834	mattmaroon	Equity for lawyers?	tony_wonder	Well, if your company is going to tank, then 1-2% is a deal. Otherwise pay cash.	It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.	5	7	2007-09-04 11:35:21 UTC
49,935	49,860	fleaflicker	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	http://www.fleaflicker.com/ is 100% java.I started developing it in '05 before Rails was huge. Using Java has actually been a huge advantage: There are hundreds of high quality open source libraries. GWT allows me to leverage existing data structures and algorithms on the client-side.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	5	24	2007-09-04 11:39:30 UTC
49,936	49,787	mattmaroon	Is it a bad idea for an online merchant to only accept Google checkout?	rms	Yes, if your product competes with mine. No otherwise.	We're setting up payment processing on our site. We don't need anything fancy. Google has anti-competitively good pricing; it's free for the seller through 2008.Perhaps there is something more professional seeming about an authorize.net style merchant account, but it's easier for us if we don't have to handle any credit card information. How much does using Google Checkout hurt us?	2	6	2007-09-04 11:51:12 UTC
49,937	49,827	mattmaroon	The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)	pg	The science of color is actually pretty amazing. Now if only there were a mathematical explanation for Paul's love of orange. I thought I was a fan of that color until I met him.	null	5	35	2007-09-04 11:52:41 UTC
49,942	49,860	twism	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	i use java	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	20	24	2007-09-04 12:26:36 UTC
49,943	49,860	brlewis	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	I use the JVM, but not the Java language.I extended Scheme to make BRL, http://brl.codesimply.net/I use it in http://ourdoings.com/	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	4	24	2007-09-04 12:36:01 UTC
49,947	49,871	brlewis	Researchers Can Crack Wireless Keyless Entry to Cars	ahsonwardak	I'm pleasantly surprised that it takes cryptographic research to break those things. I always assumed they were completely insecure.	null	0	2	2007-09-04 12:55:38 UTC
49,955	49,691	imgabe	Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?	davidw	I use flashblock ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433 ) rather than adblock. I find this gets rid of 99% of annoying ads. I don't really mind text ads or static pictures, but the flashing ones, the ones that automatically start playing audio or video when the page loads, or the ones that pop over the text and follow you down the page, those I can't stand. If you don't want your ads blocked, don't make ads that annoy users. An average user's natural state is to do nothing. If they've been moved from that state to seek out, download, install, configure an extra piece of software, then it's because the advertiser failed. Isn't the job of an advertiser to produce content that entices somebody to buy something? If the ad doesn't do that, if it actually repels the person from looking at it, then that's a crappy ad. The advertisers can't then turn around and blame the user because their ads are so horrendously bad that people have to block them to use a website, they need to make better ads. Seriously, what other content provider blames its audience when its content is rejected?Also, wtf is this sentence: "Given the decentralized nature of the Internet, the user's experience has to come first -- for now." For now? Basically, "As soon as we figure out a way to commandeer your computer and force it to show you ads, we'll do that." And they want to talk about ethics? Get real.	null	4	13	2007-09-04 13:13:39 UTC
49,956	49,614	mattmaroon	7 Reasons Why Microsoft is Doomed	drm237	You know your anti-Microsoft argument is plain old retarded when everyone on hackers news disagrees with you.	Not this year, not next year... but soon - almost certainly by the next decade.	6	17	2007-09-04 13:20:27 UTC
49,959	49,834	sanj	Equity for lawyers?	tony_wonder	Lawyers do more than incorporate.If IP is important, you can easily blow $40k on a reasonable set of patents. That's a good place for a bit of equity.	It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.	4	7	2007-09-04 13:30:52 UTC
49,961	49,827	bootload	The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)	pg	"... observing nature is far more interesting than just trying to think about things ..."Interesting article and one I'll be coming back & reading. Colour is always a hard one to pick & apply. I take photos any chance I can and one of the subjects I usually shoot each morning is a mountain shot out the kitchen window. I happened to be playing with gimp with one such image and mapped out the colours that I liked. You can see it here ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/541666109/Then looking through flickr that particular day I found a very similiar colour combination here ~ http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/545089963/ Even now looking at the top palates at colourlovers you can see another similiar combo ~ http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/77121/Good_FriendsSo I wonder if there is a natural colour grid of all possible colour combinations that are repeated in nature that you can capture (exploit), process and apply rules like the one described here?	null	0	35	2007-09-04 13:32:00 UTC
49,967	49,772	sethg	Why does software management have to be so painful? [Pic]	nreece	You think that's painful? Ha!	null	6	7	2007-09-04 13:49:38 UTC
49,969	49,744	FatBastard	Give your product a Name, not a Number	nreece	I like it when products compete on specifications, then a number can be important, and a brand. I'm reminded of chevrolet whenever I see a pound of butter because they own the number 454. The number for my cell phone is just a serial number for the accounting and parts department people. It has no other useful information.	null	1	12	2007-09-04 13:53:33 UTC
49,971	49,860	juwo	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	I am using java for juwo. Swing looks kludgy compared with flash, but Apollo Flash that lets it run offline is in beta - and Java Web Start has been running for 4-6 years.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	16	24	2007-09-04 13:56:59 UTC
49,973	49,785	rwebb	Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup	a-kill-ease	what about non-technical offsite CEOs that read lots of non-fiction!?!	Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.	5	58	2007-09-04 13:59:04 UTC
49,978	49,785	edw519	Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup	a-kill-ease	This situation sounds like a classic example of what happens when someone throws a bunch of money (and not much else) at a business opportunity. Unfortunately for most hackers, we don't often get opportunities in startups like this until AFTER the infusion of cash with all of its inherent problems. That is, of course, unless you start it yourself.	Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.	4	58	2007-09-04 14:19:06 UTC
49,981	49,950	byrneseyeview	Fake Steve Jobs Was A Blog Hater	transburgh	Lyons blogged as Fake Steve Jobs because he knew that when he came out, the discussion would go from "Fake Steve Jobs says..." to "Daniel Lyons is..."	null	0	6	2007-09-04 14:24:12 UTC
49,986	49,982	zach	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	I've been reading Maria Montessori's "The Montessori Method" anthology and it's been interesting to see how her "children's houses" were like startup schools, err... schools that are like startups. The theory side is a little hard for me to fully grok, but her insights into the mental world of children are outstanding and the way she applies them quite interesting.For the record, I went to a Montessori school for kindergarten and first grade.	null	1	23	2007-09-04 14:48:08 UTC
49,992	49,860	pramodbiligiri	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	http://www.applibase.com - Almost entirely a Java based startup.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	17	24	2007-09-04 15:00:07 UTC
49,993	49,982	ivankirigin	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	So does Will Wright http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/146	null	4	23	2007-09-04 15:01:15 UTC
49,994	49,982	farmer	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	Montessori schools seem ideal. But this looks like a bogus site. There's practically no content here. He even has Larry & Sergey mixed up.	null	0	23	2007-09-04 15:02:04 UTC
49,995	49,990	pg	Microsoft's in 'Cloud' Computing initiative	garbowza	http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797	null	0	1	2007-09-04 15:06:13 UTC
50,001	49,827	nickb	The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)	pg	Grab this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/colortheo...You'll never get colors wrong this way.	null	4	35	2007-09-04 15:21:45 UTC
50,004	49,834	wayt	Equity for lawyers?	tony_wonder	I'm a former lawyer (corporate, technology, IP) who started a s/w company in 2000 and sold it for $120M in 2005. So I've been there and done that. I help (for free) Atlanta-based hacker teams think through the "legal issues" involved in starting a business, but I'm not really a lawyer any more. It's not that complicated:(1) IMHO you should think first about the founder equity vesting issues. On the one hand, it wouldn't be fair for a co-founder to bail out after 2 months and keep all of her equity. On the other hand, it wouldn't be fair if her co-founders kicked her out after 2 months for no reason and left her with almost no equity. So there's a balance that needs to be reached, and the discussion can be emotional. With the lawyer's help, the team can strike their desired balance in an agreement that governs equity vesting, such as a restricted stock agreement. I can send you a sample agreement to illuminate the trade-offs. waytking AT gmail DOT com.(2a) If all founders can't agree on the founder equity vesting balance, you do not have a startup team. Form another one. (2b) If all founders agree on founder equity vesting balance, your lawyer can easily form your Delaware C-corp for a few hundred bucks. If you want ultimate flexibility, he can form a Delaware LLC and create your LLC operating agreement for around a thousand bucks. But a C-corp should be fine. Pay in cash - don't pay in equity. In any city with a decent-sized tech community there will be lawyers willing to do the above for just a few hundred dollars, in the hope that you'll be successful and get big and give them significant legal work later on. You may need to dig to find such lawyers in your city, but they are there. You will also be tempted to engage lawyers who promise to introduce you to VCs, angels, etc. IMHO this is not that valuable. If you are smart and resourceful, you will find the angels and VCs. If you are building stuff people want, the angels and VCs will invest in you, especially if you make them think you don't need their stinkin' money.	It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.	0	7	2007-09-04 15:35:43 UTC
50,007	49,873	dpapathanasiou	Erlang - Google TechTalk Video	jamiequint	Joe Armstrong's book (http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Erlang-Software-Concurrent...) is a great intro.	This talk will cover the history of Erlang, demonstrate major design goals with a few programming examples and also touch on the subject of the future of Erlang.	0	13	2007-09-04 15:40:20 UTC
50,008	49,785	dpapathanasiou	Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup	a-kill-ease	1, 7, 9 and 12 are universal.	Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.	2	58	2007-09-04 15:41:16 UTC
50,011	49,982	Alex3917	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	I don't think you can really call Montessori school 'education.' The word education comes from the latin e+ducere, meaning to be lead. The entire concept of Montessori schools is that they're supposed to be an environment for autodidacts.	null	3	23	2007-09-04 15:47:53 UTC
50,014	50,002	alex_c	Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)	ph0rque	Sure. And we'll have cold fusion by 2010, and a man on Mars by 2012.Fiber-to-the-home has been promised for over 10 years. It may be getting closer, but widespread availability by next year? I doubt it.But the biggest problem is that no one actually WANTS a videoconferencing unit in their home. The technology's been around for decades; ok, maybe not a high-res large screen TV, but a 5" screen over POTS. To put it simply, people don't want to have to dress up and do their hair just to place a phone call (and what do you do if someone calls when you're in your PJs?)The only real application at home are long-distance calls with family members or friends who live far. This works okay with webcams, and I can't see enough demand to buy large-screen video-conferencing units for this purpose to make it a killer app.	null	0	8	2007-09-04 16:06:30 UTC
50,018	46,785	vlad	How do you handle claims of neglect from your significant other(s)?	aswanson	"How do you handle claims of neglect from your significant other(s)? "Tell them you don't have time right now to talk to them about it?	You work on that computer too much, etc?	7	6	2007-09-04 16:17:32 UTC
50,019	49,788	german	Building Your Two Sentence Elevator Pitch	danw	Nice one! Really helpful.	null	5	23	2007-09-04 16:23:48 UTC
50,022	49,982	mattculbreth	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	Cool, we just signed up our son for Montessori. I can see the success already.	null	7	23	2007-09-04 16:42:01 UTC
50,023	50,002	tocomment	Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)	ph0rque	He's not talking about video-conferencing with a dinky webcam which yes, has failed. He's talking about a system where it really feels like the person is there. The attributes of life size-ness (sp) and eye contact make the difference.I don't think people will want this to replace telephone calls, rather to hold business meetings. A Thanksgiving dinner would be pretty cool too. So it feels like everyone is at the same table.	null	3	8	2007-09-04 16:50:39 UTC
50,024	49,948	Elfan	Mozilla Revives Eudora. You Remember Eudora, Don't You?	transburgh	My college standardized on Eudora several years ago and it has served them well. It never made much sense for Qualcomm however.	null	0	3	2007-09-04 16:51:45 UTC
50,025	49,982	fauigerzigerk	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	I had a very similar type of education. WHERE ARE MY $$$BILLIONS???	null	2	23	2007-09-04 16:52:21 UTC
50,029	50,002	ph0rque	Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)	ph0rque	The article mentioned Apple as the company who might sell these systems, but I wonder if a start-up devoted exclusively to this business model might do it better? One could use off-the-shelf hardware (to a large extent) and be almost purely a software company.	null	4	8	2007-09-04 17:10:13 UTC
50,035	49,860	huherto	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	We use Java. It seems a great alternative for us but you do need to know how to work with it and how to integrate it.We didn't use ruby because it would take us some time to learn it, and I wasn't sure on the maturity. I also prefer strong typing. I have experience with C, Smalltalk, C++, Perl and Java.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	7	24	2007-09-04 17:22:36 UTC
50,039	50,027	epi0Bauqu	Google's Newest Role: Venture Capitalist	epi0Bauqu	Does anyone know who they funded in this manner?	null	0	9	2007-09-04 17:28:29 UTC
50,041	49,982	jey	Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success	brlewis	I don't understand why self-directed education stops so early. Why aren't there high schools and colleges employing Maria Montessori's profound insights?I wish I had been lucky enough to attend a Montessori school as a kid. :-(	null	6	23	2007-09-04 17:33:10 UTC
50,042	49,860	mironathetin	Java-based Startups, do they exist?	perezd	I know java since ever and when I think code, I think java. Thats why I use it. For me it is the most productive environment.Why do you ask at all? If you know java, use it. If you know c (well, not c) - if you know python, use it. If you have to learn something, because you don't know any language, get a job first and think about a startup after you dream in (put here any language).Any scripting language basing on java will be slower than java. My opinion is: if you can avoid another software layer, avoid it. It makes you depend on more code that you don't control, slows down your apps.	I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?	11	24	2007-09-04 17:33:33 UTC
50,044	50,002	davidw	Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)	ph0rque	The economist just had a story on this:http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...Doesn't really look like startup territory to me.	null	1	8	2007-09-04 17:39:15 UTC
50,049	49,827	dfranke	The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)	pg	I like the color schemes that Muller predicts, but I don't think it's for Muller's reason. I like color schemes that have exactly one saturated color that catches the eye, like the bottom amber and the top blue in the "good" schemes. The "bad" color schemes don't have any.	null	3	35	2007-09-04 17:50:20 UTC
50,052	48,800	gcheong	Troublesome manager.. what would you do?	PStamatiou	Use version control?	So I'm a senior at top 10 engineering university and since January I have been working as lead webdev on a large, sponsor/government-funded project. I've done everything from focus groups, usability studies, surveys and have been creating a top-notch site. I was away for two weeks in the time between summer semester's end and the beginning of fall semester and got an email from my manager saying essentially "hey, I've been working with someone else on the site". What was created from that was a complete bastardization of the design and was all new code. I had lots of PHP for general ease of dev and the new guy did all 50+ files in html.Fast-forward to yesterday, new guy won't be working on it anymore and my manager wants me to take over. I've looked at this guy's code and it's a horrible mess - I want nothing of it. Deadline is in about a week.Going back to my code is an equally large task as he had been adding other pages, content and "design features".What would you do? I'm sure I am not the only one that has had this problem.	9	8	2007-09-04 18:02:35 UTC
50,058	50,031	aston	Observations From a 3-month 1-Man Startup: Part 1	gregtallent	The design of that site is shockingly similar to this one...	null	0	1	2007-09-04 18:11:47 UTC
50,072	50,059	aston	It's like "Da da dah-duh..." Simple notation and web search for tunes in your head.	zach	Interesting encoding. It's so lossy (no absolute pitch, no relative pitch, no rhythm) you're bound to run into problems. The space of a 5 note gesture is only 81 unique song snippets.	null	0	1	2007-09-04 18:36:56 UTC
50,075	40,585	cellis	How would you approach this problem?	cellis	Wow, I need to come back to these old threads sometimes. I didn't realize this got any comments. Thanks	One of my extremely ambitious friends that is rather naive about software dev (but nonetheless wants to make tech money), asked me a question that tortures me to this day: can you build me [an application] that predicts what someones face will look like at 20...60,etc? And maybe its because I haven't had any AI classes yet, or just because I am not looking at this the right way...but it was very interesting to me. Wondering if anyone had an opinion?	7	3	2007-09-04 18:46:20 UTC
50,083	50,010	leoc	"She Said Thank You" (Avoiding Procrastination)	dpapathanasiou	Why would she? So you can avoid procrastinating by not feeling the urge to procrastinate? Isn't that entirely useless advice?	null	0	14	2007-09-04 19:03:14 UTC
50,084	50,031	samb	Observations From a 3-month 1-Man Startup: Part 1	gregtallent	i didn't click through any of the links because they looked spammy. if i go in through a location it looks like yc with craigslist-like sections.i didn't get it. anyone?	null	1	1	2007-09-04 19:06:23 UTC
50,085	50,081	far33d	How Marissa Mayer Almost Killed AdSense (and she names Paul Buchheit as the real AdSense inventor)	nickb	Wow. Marissa Mayer is a serious self-promoter. When she can't take credit for an idea, she tries to take credit for "not killing" an idea?	null	1	20	2007-09-04 19:08:15 UTC
50,088	50,064	steve	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	So instincts don't exist?	null	5	16	2007-09-04 19:15:47 UTC
50,091	50,079	neilc	80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again	danw	"55 people polled."Not that I disagree with the poll's conclusions, but its methodology is pretty laughable.	null	1	8	2007-09-04 19:18:51 UTC
50,097	50,016	zach	Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach	baha_man	Appealing stories are often not true, and if true, often not important. Unfortunately, the demand for stories is based almost entirely on how appealing they are. So any place in the media where editorial judgment is absent tends to be filled with speculation, rumor, myths, triteness and trash.	null	0	7	2007-09-04 19:34:41 UTC
50,101	50,064	ivankirigin	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	I highly recommend his book, "On Intelligence".It's also very interesting the way recent research into the way our vision systems do object recognition match recent advancements in object recognition software. It's all about feature extraction to find invariant information matched against a corpus of extracted features.	null	2	16	2007-09-04 19:41:25 UTC
50,106	50,098	curi	My startup. Comments?	joe	Drop the verification emails, then drop the text about them which is the only thing on your site I read besides the word "music".	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	24	31	2007-09-04 19:52:11 UTC
50,107	50,098	zach	My startup. Comments?	joe	The Scriggler is what's money. Show it off first, middle and last. Don't hide it after a bunch of text. Put the ad copy over background images of the laptop with the Scriggler on it. Honestly, it would be better if you had one of those images as your header instead of the album-cover satellite art. Which is great, and yes, it lets us know you're cool, but you're not in the satellite business.Also, I now have 2 in a Room stuck in my head.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	1	31	2007-09-04 19:54:10 UTC
50,109	50,098	r7000	My startup. Comments?	joe	Have you had any luck at underground marketing/promotion?	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	20	31	2007-09-04 19:55:01 UTC
50,115	50,098	dfranke	My startup. Comments?	joe	The typography and the white-on-gray color scheme hurt my eyes. The animation is annoying: every time it changes, my attention jumps back to it and I'm distracted from whatever else on the page I was reading. Oh, and <grahambot>take half the text off your front page</grahambot>.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	6	31	2007-09-04 20:04:26 UTC
50,118	50,064	portLAN	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned. -- Bruce Ediger(pedantry: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.editors/msg/882fd4ef853e... )It's definitely intuitive for marsupials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouch_%28marsupial%29	null	1	16	2007-09-04 20:06:44 UTC
50,119	50,098	some	My startup. Comments?	joe	I went to your website. I read it all. I have a question:What is it about??This is not a joke.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	5	31	2007-09-04 20:08:13 UTC
50,121	49,788	donna	Building Your Two Sentence Elevator Pitch	danw	Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore pg. 154 : Define the Battle. Is a great book that discusses the positioning process.	null	2	23	2007-09-04 20:10:34 UTC
50,122	50,098	jsjenkins168	My startup. Comments?	joe	My one suggestion comes straight from the mouth of Steve Krug: "Take out half of the words on the page. Then whatever is left, take out half of that"	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	2	31	2007-09-04 20:11:48 UTC
50,127	50,064	onceageek	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	"I was born brilliant. See what education did!" :)	null	4	16	2007-09-04 20:17:29 UTC
50,131	50,079	lucraft	80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again	danw	100% of this RAZR owner is never ever going to buy Motorola again.I downgraded myself back to my old Nokia.	null	5	8	2007-09-04 20:18:52 UTC
50,132	50,098	twism	My startup. Comments?	joe	scriggleit.com is way better than scriggle-it.com	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	21	31	2007-09-04 20:19:26 UTC
50,136	50,098	SwellJoe	My startup. Comments?	joe	Nice looking design. I've been involved in the music industry, and I grokked pretty immediately what you're selling--so you might not need to take the comments to the contrary here too seriously. It might be a bit wordy for musicians, particularly bass players, though, so you might try to pare it down a bit.Any musician knows about the merch table, and they know they want the customers name and address fast and in a format that they can read (probably a quarter or more of paper mailing list signups are illegible and lost). They also know they've got a laptop on the road with them. You might make it clear that the installed software doesn't need internet access (because clubs don't consistently have wifi). I assume that to be the case, since I know you'd have no other reason for making an installable app.URL is a bit long and tough. Couldn't get "scriggle.com"? Maybe try a different name, instead of adding a special character (hyphen is hard to remember, and scriggleit would be hard to read). Just a thought. I don't think it'll kill you, but word of mouth will suffer--and word of mouth is how this thing will spread. Musicians talk before and after the show with the bands they're playing with...someone will ask, loudly because clubs are never quiet, "Hey, what's that software you're using? scribblit? wiggleit? fizzlemit? Oh, squiggleit! I got it. Cool, I'll go check it out when I get to the hotel tonight." If you send stickers and cards and other logo-encrusted schwag to your customers, they might remember to hand them out when people ask...but I wouldn't bet on it.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	0	31	2007-09-04 20:22:54 UTC
50,137	50,079	jsjenkins168	80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again	danw	Motorola isn't doing very well financially either.. Nokia is supposedly blowing them away in device sales growth. Maybe its because people now realize (as this article points out), Motorola phones generally suck.	null	2	8	2007-09-04 20:23:18 UTC
50,138	49,785	awt	Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup	a-kill-ease	I like the point about keeping cool in tense situations and not making disparrageing remarks about co-workers. You just can't break that rule.	Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.	0	58	2007-09-04 20:24:33 UTC
50,140	49,785	mynameishere	Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup	a-kill-ease	Man that tortoise picture shocked me at first. I won't tell you why.	Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.	3	58	2007-09-04 20:24:43 UTC
50,142	50,098	henning	My startup. Comments?	joe	Go easy on the egregious Flash animation.Also, realize that you're getting feedback from Paul Graham fanboys and people who read "productivity blogs" and "startup news" websites.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	4	31	2007-09-04 20:25:53 UTC
50,145	50,064	fauigerzigerk	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	What I find amazing are problems like this:What is the probability of a chopper crashing or someone shooting a rocket at it? I don't know, but I can say that when I see a chopper on TV, the probability is around 80%. Still, when I see a real life chopper, I know that it's probably not going to crash or getting shot at.Do I know that because of any experience I have? No, I haven't seen many choppers in real life and not once have I seen one take off or land. But I know about the workings of the media. I know about why people use choppers and that they wouldn't use them if they always ended up crashing and burning. Even if a program is very artificially intelligent, it's still very hard to get training data that matches that mixture of sensual experience and logical reasoning. It's a hard problem. I still believe it can be done, but we're not nearly there yet. I hope Hawkins makes some progress without a big disppointment that discourages further research.	null	0	16	2007-09-04 20:26:40 UTC
50,148	50,098	dottertrotter	My startup. Comments?	joe	Gotta get a domain name without a dash.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	13	31	2007-09-04 20:31:26 UTC
50,151	50,081	henning	How Marissa Mayer Almost Killed AdSense (and she names Paul Buchheit as the real AdSense inventor)	nickb	The sad thing is that at bigger companies like IBM dozens and dozens of billion-dollar ideas have been rejected out of hand for no good reason, far out of line with unfortunate serendipity. IBM rejected xerography, minicomputers, personal computing, and ignored the work its researchers did on relational databases.Back in the 19th century, there were people who thought telephony was a lousy idea.Things will always be like this.	null	0	20	2007-09-04 20:34:25 UTC
50,156	50,154	henning	If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?	henning	Furthermore, links which appear to perform non-idempotent actions (voting) which are sent as GET requests seem kind of sketchy.Ever hear the horror story about what happens when Google rolls through your CMS that has the "delete" button as a link?	Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.	2	24	2007-09-04 20:40:25 UTC
50,157	50,079	joe	80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again	danw	I wouldn't buy Motorola to begin with. I bought my cell phone from Amazon.com, and the RAZR got pretty torn up in the reviews I read. So I opted for a Nokia, and have never been less than pleased with it.	null	3	8	2007-09-04 20:41:23 UTC
50,159	50,154	pg	If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?	henning	Because we're smart enough to realize that html is object code?For all I know, my macroexpansions are ugly too. The whole point is that I don't have to look at them.	Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.	1	24	2007-09-04 20:42:47 UTC
50,160	50,154	byrneseyeview	If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?	henning	I've wondered about that, too. One guess: it makes the design harder to steal (but not harder to copy). With CSS, you can just reuse someone else's format -- not so with spacer .gifs.	Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.	9	24	2007-09-04 20:43:09 UTC
50,163	50,064	mynameishere	When you are born, you know nothing	vuknje	Knowing how to learn is "something". And if you include non-conscious activities apart from those that involve systems normally considered conscious (bodily functions), then we "know" almost everything just in our brain stems.	null	3	16	2007-09-04 20:48:04 UTC
50,169	50,098	samb	My startup. Comments?	joe	i'd cut the initial sign-up form to the essentials.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	19	31	2007-09-04 21:03:49 UTC
50,172	50,167	steffon	Scientist maps own DNA	muriithi	What's also interesting are internet start-ups that will accept samples of your DNA, decode it, and then give you a profile of you genetic weaknesses. http://www.23andme.com/ http://www.navigenics.com/	null	0	2	2007-09-04 21:14:45 UTC
50,176	50,002	stuki	Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)	ph0rque	Video conference units are awesome in work from home developer scenarios. When collaborating on code, the ability to see the guy at the other end coding away, is soooo much better than wondering if he hung up or got disconnected when he stops talking to think or type. It really must be tried to be believed. (And understanding Indians is a lot easier when you can see as well as hear them:)). Also, with these things available, there is even less reason for developers not to work out of private offices. YC should convince Tandberg or Polycom to provide them some samples for a lower cost. I'm sure some founders could find ways to put them to good use, and the manufacturers could get some exposure in markets where they're not well represented.	null	2	8	2007-09-04 21:20:02 UTC
50,177	50,098	champion	My startup. Comments?	joe	Cool idea! Couple thoughts:- Agree that the front page is very busy and wordy.- I expected that you could click on any of the icons on the left (Code, Mail, Kit, etc.) to learn more about the offerings. "About" has more about the products, but I usually expect About to describe the founders or contact info, etc. - I would leave off all the "coming soon" features. Announce them when they are ready.- Agree with the poster that news.yc isn't your target market. I'd find some bands, buy them a coffee, have them look at your laptop & get their opinion.- Bonus comment ;-) Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting shows.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	3	31	2007-09-04 21:21:17 UTC
50,185	50,098	mattmaroon	My startup. Comments?	joe	Scriggle it. Just a little bit.	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	14	31	2007-09-04 21:29:32 UTC
50,186	50,098	sweeper	My startup. Comments?	joe	Scriggler is DEFINITELY the money. Guy who wrote it must be AWESOME. >.>	Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?	25	31	2007-09-04 21:30:42 UTC
50,189	50,154	rwalker	If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?	henning	One of the speakers at our YC session had a great quote: "It just doesn't matter." The site delivers interesting stories and commentary on a topic I care about - who cares what HTML it uses?	Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.	0	24	2007-09-04 21:33:18 UTC
50,194	50,079	nickb	80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again	danw	RAZR is your typical form over function product: it looks great but performs horribly. Usability is absolute crap too.	null	4	8	2007-09-04 21:51:48 UTC

49,889

49,662

graham-miln

Good Automatic FAQ Style User Support Software?

staunch

A FAQ is warning your user support material is failing.Consider rewriting, augmenting, or restructuring your user guide. How about adding a 'getting started guide', assistants, wizards, or sample walk through documents?Visit http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/ and browse the posts on technical support and manuals.Depending on your users, the very acronym FAQ is a hurdle. The majority of potential users have no idea, or desire to learn, what FAQ means.With every significant release of DssW Power Manager http://www.dssw.co.uk , we have been improving, refining, and adding to the user experience. The core functionality has remained fairly constant but sales increase with each release; more 'get' the concept thanks to better documentation and experience.Hope this helps,Graham

I want to build up a strong FAQ page so I don't have to repeatedly answer the same questions and users can help themselves. I like what FAQ-O-Matic[1] does, but it's an old, ugly, and creaky program at this point. I'm tempted to write my own, but not if there's some good out there. Anyone know of something nice?1. http://faqomatic.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/427.html

0

4

2007-09-04 07:27:00 UTC

49,890

49,860

hacker64

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

Using RoR is like taking a loan. You build it fast, but then spend a lot of time fixing it.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

8

24

2007-09-04 07:30:10 UTC

49,894

49,860

jamongkad

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

Just curious do people still hack in ColdFusion? I haven't heard from that language in a looong time.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

14

24

2007-09-04 07:41:05 UTC

49,898

49,784

SwellJoe

Merge Wufoo and Weebly

binnymathews

The guys in the companies have met, though I don't think either are looking for a merger. I'm sure they've discussed "synergies".They are, despite appearances to the contrary, being used in very different markets, as epi hints at. Wufoo is very heavily tilted towards business users, with a client list including a nice little chunk of the Fortune 500 (and Virtualmin, Inc. as we use it for our "get a T-shirt" form). Weebly is heavily favored by individuals. I don't know of any big businesses using Weebly, but they've got like a billion people using it for personal websites (I've setup one, and I might even move my personal blog over).Wufoo did just add a very simple checkout module, which may be the thing that pushes them into the mainstream with individuals selling small goods. But I dunno if that's how it's shaking out. I suspect it is small businesses and organizations, like always, but now they're collecting payments for their field trips or bake sales or T-shirts or whatever it is they're organizing with the form.

I think it makes a lot of sense to merge / combine wufoo and weebly (both Y Combinator funded) into a single company - 1. Both address the same pain of creating online pages without having to write code.2. Most people creating websites inevitably have to create some kind of form on their website. 3. The combined company's services is probably much more appealing to a buyer (maybe some online store manager) than two individual form and web page creation companies.Any thoughts ?Thanks

1

4

2007-09-04 07:54:08 UTC

49,899

49,860

fauigerzigerk

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

Java is definately a viable choice, no matter how unpopular it currently is. It has some real advantages over Ruby, the most important being speed, which translates into productivity if the alternative is mixing C and Ruby. Another advantage is proper unicode support. I still decided against Java because I feel that meta programming could be that great enabler of the next productivity revolution. A revolution that smarter people than me have experienced ages ago. Having explored Java to some extremes, I know that many of the complexities of something like J2EE are down to the lack of powerful language internal meta programming facilities.Why not JRuby? Because right now JRuby is even slower than C based Ruby and Ruby 2 will have a virtual machine too, which doesn't have to concern itself with anything other than serving Ruby. Yes, Java has a lot of libraries. But how many of those am I really using in my startup? Quite a few, and it does take me some time to figure out good alternatives for Ruby. But at the end of the day the library issue doesn't make a big difference in my case.The only thing that really concerns me about the popular dynamic languages is raw speed for algorithmic stuff. Yes I do need that for what I'm doing. If lisp had any momentum whatsoever I'd gladly jump onto something like sbcl because it has all the metaprogramming facilities and it's as fast as C.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

1

24

2007-09-04 07:55:26 UTC

49,900

49,860

elad

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

We're using both Java and Ruby. We started out with Ruby and Rails, which worked great for the prototype but we have some very processor-intensive operations and the Ruby code won't scale. Rewriting these in Java produced an instant 100-fold performance improvement, so going forward we're doing that stuff in Java. On the other hand, we have some text-processing stuff where Ruby really shines. Having used Ruby for that I'd never go back to Java for such tasks.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

9

24

2007-09-04 07:58:55 UTC

49,909

49,691

Tichy

Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?

davidw

I think if the ads come from the same server as the web site, AdBlocker is screwed? So I guess that is what is going to happen - which is good, because it reduces the amount of tracking the advertising companies can do on the user.

null

7

13

2007-09-04 09:10:50 UTC

49,910

49,860

davidw

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

Java often feels like "playing fetch" to me:http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2006/11/23/playing-fetchIn other words, there's so much makework that a small team is at a disadvantage compared to a bigger team, which is not the kind of playing field a startup wants to be on.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

13

24

2007-09-04 09:17:55 UTC

49,911

49,860

balaji

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

www.dimdim.com I think these guyz use Java.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

19

24

2007-09-04 09:18:34 UTC

49,912

49,834

adamsmith

Equity for lawyers?

tony_wonder

The firm should do the work for deferred cash payment. I.e. they do $25k of legal work, and you pay up when you get real money. You obviously need to look credible / have good intros / etc.They shouldn't get equity because they don't _really_ add that much value at an early stage. It will also look bad to investors if you give equity to people who shouldn't have it. Work on your product, ask questions later.Set up an S corporation if you incorporate yourself.

It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.

1

7

2007-09-04 09:19:31 UTC

49,913

48,944

tzury

If you were to write Wikipedia today...

ph0rque

This question can be answered only by Wikipedia IT since they are with the experience with Wikipedia needs in all aspects.

If you were to write Wikipedia today using available languages and frameworks, what language/framework would you use? And why?

4

3

2007-09-04 09:29:12 UTC

49,917

49,860

mattmaroon

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

We may use java for a tiny fraction of our startup (back end of the live game server) for the performance benefits. Does that count?

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

10

24

2007-09-04 09:51:47 UTC

49,921

49,860

tomh

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

We use Java - although, to be quite honest we were a PHP shop starting out, but then we got a big-league client who said they wanted a system built from scratch and, oh by the way, "it has to be in Java". Four years later, we have a mid-size application (80K lines) that operates well and is attracting more clients, though I often feel we have stepped into a few 'pits of despair' while building it. There are several 1500-line servlets which grind away on certain tasks, for example.The upside is, we are now putting out our I18N'ed version of the product and it was very easy to produce a version of the app in a Unicode-based language, which will probably land us several more clients this year.In short, Java can be great and there are a lot of things out there to help you build an app, but it only works as long as you keep the code clean and exercise your own discipline to keep from getting too sloppy. Otherwise, you can wind up with code that needs a rewrite from day one.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

2

24

2007-09-04 10:16:13 UTC

49,923

49,860

rzwitserloot

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

http://tipit.to/ is mostly GWT on the front and all java on the server.CF is crap. Groovy is okay, but not -that- great. I'd go with jython or jruby instead if you're thinking of using Groovy.Scala is absolutely great. It's my favourite language. tipit's server side isn't Scala based only because I wasn't fully aware of Scala when we started out. Scala is functional in theory but even with a very imperative background you can write your code and slowly get used to solving problems 'the functional way', which does come off a bit cleaner (e.g. using case classes).

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

6

24

2007-09-04 10:33:19 UTC

49,925

49,860

aaroniba

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

It's important to differentiate "Java" from the "JVM". Java is a programming language that gets compiled to bytecodes, and the JVM is an execution environment that runs bytecodes. (There is some java-language-ish stuff in the bytecode spec, but for the most part you can treat them separately).In my opinion, Java is a clumsy language but the JVM is awesome. Static typing and lack of first-class functions or easy data types make Java programs verbose and annoying to change. The JVM, on the other hand, is fast, portable, well-specified, and there are a ton of libraries that run on it.To have the best of both worlds, you can use the JVM to run a more dynamic language (not Java)! There are many projects to bring different languages to the JVM, but my favorite is Rhino, which compiles JavaScript to bytecodes. Rhino is also what powers my favorite web framework, Helma.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

0

24

2007-09-04 10:40:09 UTC

49,929

48,739

chmac

How does karma work?

chmac

For example, this item has 24 points, but the user is brand new and has only posted 1 item which has no comments. Where does that karma come from? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785

How does the karma and points system on this site work? I can't figure it out. Do people with more karma generate more points per vote? How are the points generated, I've seen some comments which are worth 17 points, where does that number come from?

1

4

2007-09-04 11:15:07 UTC

49,933

49,834

mattmaroon

Equity for lawyers?

tony_wonder

Well, if your company is going to tank, then 1-2% is a deal. Otherwise pay cash.

It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.

5

7

2007-09-04 11:35:21 UTC

49,935

49,860

fleaflicker

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

http://www.fleaflicker.com/ is 100% java.I started developing it in '05 before Rails was huge. Using Java has actually been a huge advantage: There are hundreds of high quality open source libraries. GWT allows me to leverage existing data structures and algorithms on the client-side.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

5

24

2007-09-04 11:39:30 UTC

49,936

49,787

mattmaroon

Is it a bad idea for an online merchant to only accept Google checkout?

rms

Yes, if your product competes with mine. No otherwise.

We're setting up payment processing on our site. We don't need anything fancy. Google has anti-competitively good pricing; it's free for the seller through 2008.Perhaps there is something more professional seeming about an authorize.net style merchant account, but it's easier for us if we don't have to handle any credit card information. How much does using Google Checkout hurt us?

2

6

2007-09-04 11:51:12 UTC

49,937

49,827

mattmaroon

The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)

pg

The science of color is actually pretty amazing. Now if only there were a mathematical explanation for Paul's love of orange. I thought I was a fan of that color until I met him.

null

5

35

2007-09-04 11:52:41 UTC

49,942

49,860

twism

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

i use java

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

20

24

2007-09-04 12:26:36 UTC

49,943

49,860

brlewis

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

I use the JVM, but not the Java language.I extended Scheme to make BRL, http://brl.codesimply.net/I use it in http://ourdoings.com/

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

4

24

2007-09-04 12:36:01 UTC

49,947

49,871

brlewis

Researchers Can Crack Wireless Keyless Entry to Cars

ahsonwardak

I'm pleasantly surprised that it takes cryptographic research to break those things. I always assumed they were completely insecure.

null

0

2

2007-09-04 12:55:38 UTC

49,955

49,691

imgabe

Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?

davidw

I use flashblock ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433 ) rather than adblock. I find this gets rid of 99% of annoying ads. I don't really mind text ads or static pictures, but the flashing ones, the ones that automatically start playing audio or video when the page loads, or the ones that pop over the text and follow you down the page, those I can't stand. If you don't want your ads blocked, don't make ads that annoy users. An average user's natural state is to do nothing. If they've been moved from that state to seek out, download, install, configure an extra piece of software, then it's because the advertiser failed. Isn't the job of an advertiser to produce content that entices somebody to buy something? If the ad doesn't do that, if it actually repels the person from looking at it, then that's a crappy ad. The advertisers can't then turn around and blame the user because their ads are so horrendously bad that people have to block them to use a website, they need to make better ads. Seriously, what other content provider blames its audience when its content is rejected?Also, wtf is this sentence: "Given the decentralized nature of the Internet, the user's experience has to come first -- for now." For now? Basically, "As soon as we figure out a way to commandeer your computer and force it to show you ads, we'll do that." And they want to talk about ethics? Get real.

null

4

13

2007-09-04 13:13:39 UTC

49,956

49,614

mattmaroon

7 Reasons Why Microsoft is Doomed

drm237

You know your anti-Microsoft argument is plain old retarded when everyone on hackers news disagrees with you.

Not this year, not next year... but soon - almost certainly by the next decade.

6

17

2007-09-04 13:20:27 UTC

49,959

49,834

sanj

Equity for lawyers?

tony_wonder

Lawyers do more than incorporate.If IP is important, you can easily blow $40k on a reasonable set of patents. That's a good place for a bit of equity.

It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.

4

7

2007-09-04 13:30:52 UTC

49,961

49,827

bootload

The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)

pg

"... observing nature is far more interesting than just trying to think about things ..."Interesting article and one I'll be coming back & reading. Colour is always a hard one to pick & apply. I take photos any chance I can and one of the subjects I usually shoot each morning is a mountain shot out the kitchen window. I happened to be playing with gimp with one such image and mapped out the colours that I liked. You can see it here ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/541666109/Then looking through flickr that particular day I found a very similiar colour combination here ~ http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/545089963/ Even now looking at the top palates at colourlovers you can see another similiar combo ~ http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/77121/Good_FriendsSo I wonder if there is a natural colour grid of all possible colour combinations that are repeated in nature that you can capture (exploit), process and apply rules like the one described here?

null

0

35

2007-09-04 13:32:00 UTC

49,967

49,772

sethg

Why does software management have to be so painful? [Pic]

nreece

You think that's painful? Ha!

null

6

7

2007-09-04 13:49:38 UTC

49,969

49,744

FatBastard

Give your product a Name, not a Number

nreece

I like it when products compete on specifications, then a number can be important, and a brand. I'm reminded of chevrolet whenever I see a pound of butter because they own the number 454. The number for my cell phone is just a serial number for the accounting and parts department people. It has no other useful information.

null

1

12

2007-09-04 13:53:33 UTC

49,971

49,860

juwo

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

I am using java for juwo. Swing looks kludgy compared with flash, but Apollo Flash that lets it run offline is in beta - and Java Web Start has been running for 4-6 years.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

16

24

2007-09-04 13:56:59 UTC

49,973

49,785

rwebb

Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup

a-kill-ease

what about non-technical offsite CEOs that read lots of non-fiction!?!

Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.

5

58

2007-09-04 13:59:04 UTC

49,978

49,785

edw519

Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup

a-kill-ease

This situation sounds like a classic example of what happens when someone throws a bunch of money (and not much else) at a business opportunity. Unfortunately for most hackers, we don't often get opportunities in startups like this until AFTER the infusion of cash with all of its inherent problems. That is, of course, unless you start it yourself.

Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.

4

58

2007-09-04 14:19:06 UTC

49,981

49,950

byrneseyeview

Fake Steve Jobs Was A Blog Hater

transburgh

Lyons blogged as Fake Steve Jobs because he knew that when he came out, the discussion would go from "Fake Steve Jobs says..." to "Daniel Lyons is..."

null

0

6

2007-09-04 14:24:12 UTC

49,986

49,982

zach

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

I've been reading Maria Montessori's "The Montessori Method" anthology and it's been interesting to see how her "children's houses" were like startup schools, err... schools that are like startups. The theory side is a little hard for me to fully grok, but her insights into the mental world of children are outstanding and the way she applies them quite interesting.For the record, I went to a Montessori school for kindergarten and first grade.

null

1

23

2007-09-04 14:48:08 UTC

49,992

49,860

pramodbiligiri

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

http://www.applibase.com - Almost entirely a Java based startup.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

17

24

2007-09-04 15:00:07 UTC

49,993

49,982

ivankirigin

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

So does Will Wright http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/146

null

4

23

2007-09-04 15:01:15 UTC

49,994

49,982

farmer

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

Montessori schools seem ideal. But this looks like a bogus site. There's practically no content here. He even has Larry & Sergey mixed up.

null

0

23

2007-09-04 15:02:04 UTC

49,995

49,990

pg

Microsoft's in 'Cloud' Computing initiative

garbowza

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797

null

0

1

2007-09-04 15:06:13 UTC

50,001

49,827

nickb

The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)

pg

Grab this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/colortheo...You'll never get colors wrong this way.

null

4

35

2007-09-04 15:21:45 UTC

50,004

49,834

wayt

Equity for lawyers?

tony_wonder

I'm a former lawyer (corporate, technology, IP) who started a s/w company in 2000 and sold it for $120M in 2005. So I've been there and done that. I help (for free) Atlanta-based hacker teams think through the "legal issues" involved in starting a business, but I'm not really a lawyer any more. It's not that complicated:(1) IMHO you should think first about the founder equity vesting issues. On the one hand, it wouldn't be fair for a co-founder to bail out after 2 months and keep all of her equity. On the other hand, it wouldn't be fair if her co-founders kicked her out after 2 months for no reason and left her with almost no equity. So there's a balance that needs to be reached, and the discussion can be emotional. With the lawyer's help, the team can strike their desired balance in an agreement that governs equity vesting, such as a restricted stock agreement. I can send you a sample agreement to illuminate the trade-offs. waytking AT gmail DOT com.(2a) If all founders can't agree on the founder equity vesting balance, you do not have a startup team. Form another one. (2b) If all founders agree on founder equity vesting balance, your lawyer can easily form your Delaware C-corp for a few hundred bucks. If you want ultimate flexibility, he can form a Delaware LLC and create your LLC operating agreement for around a thousand bucks. But a C-corp should be fine. Pay in cash - don't pay in equity. In any city with a decent-sized tech community there will be lawyers willing to do the above for just a few hundred dollars, in the hope that you'll be successful and get big and give them significant legal work later on. You may need to dig to find such lawyers in your city, but they are there. You will also be tempted to engage lawyers who promise to introduce you to VCs, angels, etc. IMHO this is not that valuable. If you are smart and resourceful, you will find the angels and VCs. If you are building stuff people want, the angels and VCs will invest in you, especially if you make them think you don't need their stinkin' money.

It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.

0

7

2007-09-04 15:35:43 UTC

50,007

49,873

dpapathanasiou

Erlang - Google TechTalk Video

jamiequint

Joe Armstrong's book (http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Erlang-Software-Concurrent...) is a great intro.

This talk will cover the history of Erlang, demonstrate major design goals with a few programming examples and also touch on the subject of the future of Erlang.

0

13

2007-09-04 15:40:20 UTC

50,008

49,785

dpapathanasiou

Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup

a-kill-ease

1, 7, 9 and 12 are universal.

Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.

2

58

2007-09-04 15:41:16 UTC

50,011

49,982

Alex3917

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

I don't think you can really call Montessori school 'education.' The word education comes from the latin e+ducere, meaning to be lead. The entire concept of Montessori schools is that they're supposed to be an environment for autodidacts.

null

3

23

2007-09-04 15:47:53 UTC

50,014

50,002

alex_c

Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)

ph0rque

Sure. And we'll have cold fusion by 2010, and a man on Mars by 2012.Fiber-to-the-home has been promised for over 10 years. It may be getting closer, but widespread availability by next year? I doubt it.But the biggest problem is that no one actually WANTS a videoconferencing unit in their home. The technology's been around for decades; ok, maybe not a high-res large screen TV, but a 5" screen over POTS. To put it simply, people don't want to have to dress up and do their hair just to place a phone call (and what do you do if someone calls when you're in your PJs?)The only real application at home are long-distance calls with family members or friends who live far. This works okay with webcams, and I can't see enough demand to buy large-screen video-conferencing units for this purpose to make it a killer app.

null

0

8

2007-09-04 16:06:30 UTC

50,018

46,785

vlad

How do you handle claims of neglect from your significant other(s)?

aswanson

"How do you handle claims of neglect from your significant other(s)? "Tell them you don't have time right now to talk to them about it?

You work on that computer too much, etc?

7

6

2007-09-04 16:17:32 UTC

50,019

49,788

german

Building Your Two Sentence Elevator Pitch

danw

Nice one! Really helpful.

null

5

23

2007-09-04 16:23:48 UTC

50,022

49,982

mattculbreth

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

Cool, we just signed up our son for Montessori. I can see the success already.

null

7

23

2007-09-04 16:42:01 UTC

50,023

50,002

tocomment

Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)

ph0rque

He's not talking about video-conferencing with a dinky webcam which yes, has failed. He's talking about a system where it really feels like the person is there. The attributes of life size-ness (sp) and eye contact make the difference.I don't think people will want this to replace telephone calls, rather to hold business meetings. A Thanksgiving dinner would be pretty cool too. So it feels like everyone is at the same table.

null

3

8

2007-09-04 16:50:39 UTC

50,024

49,948

Elfan

Mozilla Revives Eudora. You Remember Eudora, Don't You?

transburgh

My college standardized on Eudora several years ago and it has served them well. It never made much sense for Qualcomm however.

null

0

3

2007-09-04 16:51:45 UTC

50,025

49,982

fauigerzigerk

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

I had a very similar type of education. WHERE ARE MY $$$BILLIONS???

null

2

23

2007-09-04 16:52:21 UTC

50,029

50,002

ph0rque

Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)

ph0rque

The article mentioned Apple as the company who might sell these systems, but I wonder if a start-up devoted exclusively to this business model might do it better? One could use off-the-shelf hardware (to a large extent) and be almost purely a software company.

null

4

8

2007-09-04 17:10:13 UTC

50,035

49,860

huherto

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

We use Java. It seems a great alternative for us but you do need to know how to work with it and how to integrate it.We didn't use ruby because it would take us some time to learn it, and I wasn't sure on the maturity. I also prefer strong typing. I have experience with C, Smalltalk, C++, Perl and Java.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

7

24

2007-09-04 17:22:36 UTC

50,039

50,027

epi0Bauqu

Google's Newest Role: Venture Capitalist

epi0Bauqu

Does anyone know who they funded in this manner?

null

0

9

2007-09-04 17:28:29 UTC

50,041

49,982

jey

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success

brlewis

I don't understand why self-directed education stops so early. Why aren't there high schools and colleges employing Maria Montessori's profound insights?I wish I had been lucky enough to attend a Montessori school as a kid. :-(

null

6

23

2007-09-04 17:33:10 UTC

50,042

49,860

mironathetin

Java-based Startups, do they exist?

perezd

I know java since ever and when I think code, I think java. Thats why I use it. For me it is the most productive environment.Why do you ask at all? If you know java, use it. If you know c (well, not c) - if you know python, use it. If you have to learn something, because you don't know any language, get a job first and think about a startup after you dream in (put here any language).Any scripting language basing on java will be slower than java. My opinion is: if you can avoid another software layer, avoid it. It makes you depend on more code that you don't control, slows down your apps.

I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice. What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?

11

24

2007-09-04 17:33:33 UTC

50,044

50,002

davidw

Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)

ph0rque

The economist just had a story on this:http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...Doesn't really look like startup territory to me.

null

1

8

2007-09-04 17:39:15 UTC

50,049

49,827

dfranke

The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)

pg

I like the color schemes that Muller predicts, but I don't think it's for Muller's reason. I like color schemes that have exactly one saturated color that catches the eye, like the bottom amber and the top blue in the "good" schemes. The "bad" color schemes don't have any.

null

3

35

2007-09-04 17:50:20 UTC

50,052

48,800

gcheong

Troublesome manager.. what would you do?

PStamatiou

Use version control?

So I'm a senior at top 10 engineering university and since January I have been working as lead webdev on a large, sponsor/government-funded project. I've done everything from focus groups, usability studies, surveys and have been creating a top-notch site. I was away for two weeks in the time between summer semester's end and the beginning of fall semester and got an email from my manager saying essentially "hey, I've been working with someone else on the site". What was created from that was a complete bastardization of the design and was all new code. I had lots of PHP for general ease of dev and the new guy did all 50+ files in html.Fast-forward to yesterday, new guy won't be working on it anymore and my manager wants me to take over. I've looked at this guy's code and it's a horrible mess - I want nothing of it. Deadline is in about a week.Going back to my code is an equally large task as he had been adding other pages, content and "design features".What would you do? I'm sure I am not the only one that has had this problem.

9

8

2007-09-04 18:02:35 UTC

50,058

50,031

aston

Observations From a 3-month 1-Man Startup: Part 1

gregtallent

The design of that site is shockingly similar to this one...

null

0

1

2007-09-04 18:11:47 UTC

50,072

50,059

aston

It's like "Da da dah-duh..." Simple notation and web search for tunes in your head.

zach

Interesting encoding. It's so lossy (no absolute pitch, no relative pitch, no rhythm) you're bound to run into problems. The space of a 5 note gesture is only 81 unique song snippets.

null

0

1

2007-09-04 18:36:56 UTC

50,075

40,585

cellis

How would you approach this problem?

cellis

Wow, I need to come back to these old threads sometimes. I didn't realize this got any comments. Thanks

One of my extremely ambitious friends that is rather naive about software dev (but nonetheless wants to make tech money), asked me a question that tortures me to this day: can you build me [an application] that predicts what someones face will look like at 20...60,etc? And maybe its because I haven't had any AI classes yet, or just because I am not looking at this the right way...but it was very interesting to me. Wondering if anyone had an opinion?

7

3

2007-09-04 18:46:20 UTC

50,083

50,010

leoc

"She Said Thank You" (Avoiding Procrastination)

dpapathanasiou

Why would she? So you can avoid procrastinating by not feeling the urge to procrastinate? Isn't that entirely useless advice?

null

0

14

2007-09-04 19:03:14 UTC

50,084

50,031

samb

Observations From a 3-month 1-Man Startup: Part 1

gregtallent

i didn't click through any of the links because they looked spammy. if i go in through a location it looks like yc with craigslist-like sections.i didn't get it. anyone?

null

1

2007-09-04 19:06:23 UTC

50,085

50,081

far33d

How Marissa Mayer Almost Killed AdSense (and she names Paul Buchheit as the real AdSense inventor)

nickb

Wow. Marissa Mayer is a serious self-promoter. When she can't take credit for an idea, she tries to take credit for "not killing" an idea?

null

1

20

2007-09-04 19:08:15 UTC

50,088

50,064

steve

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

So instincts don't exist?

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5

16

2007-09-04 19:15:47 UTC

50,091

50,079

neilc

80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again

danw

"55 people polled."Not that I disagree with the poll's conclusions, but its methodology is pretty laughable.

null

1

8

2007-09-04 19:18:51 UTC

50,097

50,016

zach

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach

baha_man

Appealing stories are often not true, and if true, often not important. Unfortunately, the demand for stories is based almost entirely on how appealing they are. So any place in the media where editorial judgment is absent tends to be filled with speculation, rumor, myths, triteness and trash.

null

0

7

2007-09-04 19:34:41 UTC

50,101

50,064

ivankirigin

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

I highly recommend his book, "On Intelligence".It's also very interesting the way recent research into the way our vision systems do object recognition match recent advancements in object recognition software. It's all about feature extraction to find invariant information matched against a corpus of extracted features.

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2

16

2007-09-04 19:41:25 UTC

50,106

50,098

curi

My startup. Comments?

joe

Drop the verification emails, then drop the text about them which is the only thing on your site I read besides the word "music".

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

24

31

2007-09-04 19:52:11 UTC

50,107

50,098

zach

My startup. Comments?

joe

The Scriggler is what's money. Show it off first, middle and last. Don't hide it after a bunch of text. Put the ad copy over background images of the laptop with the Scriggler on it. Honestly, it would be better if you had one of those images as your header instead of the album-cover satellite art. Which is great, and yes, it lets us know you're cool, but you're not in the satellite business.Also, I now have 2 in a Room stuck in my head.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

1

31

2007-09-04 19:54:10 UTC

50,109

50,098

r7000

My startup. Comments?

joe

Have you had any luck at underground marketing/promotion?

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

20

31

2007-09-04 19:55:01 UTC

50,115

50,098

dfranke

My startup. Comments?

joe

The typography and the white-on-gray color scheme hurt my eyes. The animation is annoying: every time it changes, my attention jumps back to it and I'm distracted from whatever else on the page I was reading. Oh, and <grahambot>take half the text off your front page</grahambot>.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

6

31

2007-09-04 20:04:26 UTC

50,118

50,064

portLAN

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned. -- Bruce Ediger(pedantry: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.editors/msg/882fd4ef853e... )It's definitely intuitive for marsupials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouch_%28marsupial%29

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1

16

2007-09-04 20:06:44 UTC

50,119

50,098

some

My startup. Comments?

joe

I went to your website. I read it all. I have a question:What is it about??This is not a joke.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

5

31

2007-09-04 20:08:13 UTC

50,121

49,788

donna

Building Your Two Sentence Elevator Pitch

danw

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore pg. 154 : Define the Battle. Is a great book that discusses the positioning process.

null

2

23

2007-09-04 20:10:34 UTC

50,122

50,098

jsjenkins168

My startup. Comments?

joe

My one suggestion comes straight from the mouth of Steve Krug: "Take out half of the words on the page. Then whatever is left, take out half of that"

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

2

31

2007-09-04 20:11:48 UTC

50,127

50,064

onceageek

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

"I was born brilliant. See what education did!" :)

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4

16

2007-09-04 20:17:29 UTC

50,131

50,079

lucraft

80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again

danw

100% of this RAZR owner is never ever going to buy Motorola again.I downgraded myself back to my old Nokia.

null

5

8

2007-09-04 20:18:52 UTC

50,132

50,098

twism

My startup. Comments?

joe

scriggleit.com is way better than scriggle-it.com

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

21

31

2007-09-04 20:19:26 UTC

50,136

50,098

SwellJoe

My startup. Comments?

joe

Nice looking design. I've been involved in the music industry, and I grokked pretty immediately what you're selling--so you might not need to take the comments to the contrary here too seriously. It might be a bit wordy for musicians, particularly bass players, though, so you might try to pare it down a bit.Any musician knows about the merch table, and they know they want the customers name and address fast and in a format that they can read (probably a quarter or more of paper mailing list signups are illegible and lost). They also know they've got a laptop on the road with them. You might make it clear that the installed software doesn't need internet access (because clubs don't consistently have wifi). I assume that to be the case, since I know you'd have no other reason for making an installable app.URL is a bit long and tough. Couldn't get "scriggle.com"? Maybe try a different name, instead of adding a special character (hyphen is hard to remember, and scriggleit would be hard to read). Just a thought. I don't think it'll kill you, but word of mouth will suffer--and word of mouth is how this thing will spread. Musicians talk before and after the show with the bands they're playing with...someone will ask, loudly because clubs are never quiet, "Hey, what's that software you're using? scribblit? wiggleit? fizzlemit? Oh, squiggleit! I got it. Cool, I'll go check it out when I get to the hotel tonight." If you send stickers and cards and other logo-encrusted schwag to your customers, they might remember to hand them out when people ask...but I wouldn't bet on it.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

0

31

2007-09-04 20:22:54 UTC

50,137

50,079

jsjenkins168

80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again

danw

Motorola isn't doing very well financially either.. Nokia is supposedly blowing them away in device sales growth. Maybe its because people now realize (as this article points out), Motorola phones generally suck.

null

2

8

2007-09-04 20:23:18 UTC

50,138

49,785

awt

Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup

a-kill-ease

I like the point about keeping cool in tense situations and not making disparrageing remarks about co-workers. You just can't break that rule.

Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.

0

58

2007-09-04 20:24:33 UTC

50,140

49,785

mynameishere

Observations from 10 Months Working at a Small Startup

a-kill-ease

Man that tortoise picture shocked me at first. I won't tell you why.

Observations about startup life and manager after working for 10 months at a small venture-capital funded startup.

3

58

2007-09-04 20:24:43 UTC

50,142

50,098

henning

My startup. Comments?

joe

Go easy on the egregious Flash animation.Also, realize that you're getting feedback from Paul Graham fanboys and people who read "productivity blogs" and "startup news" websites.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

4

31

2007-09-04 20:25:53 UTC

50,145

50,064

fauigerzigerk

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

What I find amazing are problems like this:What is the probability of a chopper crashing or someone shooting a rocket at it? I don't know, but I can say that when I see a chopper on TV, the probability is around 80%. Still, when I see a real life chopper, I know that it's probably not going to crash or getting shot at.Do I know that because of any experience I have? No, I haven't seen many choppers in real life and not once have I seen one take off or land. But I know about the workings of the media. I know about why people use choppers and that they wouldn't use them if they always ended up crashing and burning. Even if a program is very artificially intelligent, it's still very hard to get training data that matches that mixture of sensual experience and logical reasoning. It's a hard problem. I still believe it can be done, but we're not nearly there yet. I hope Hawkins makes some progress without a big disppointment that discourages further research.

null

0

16

2007-09-04 20:26:40 UTC

50,148

50,098

dottertrotter

My startup. Comments?

joe

Gotta get a domain name without a dash.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

13

31

2007-09-04 20:31:26 UTC

50,151

50,081

henning

How Marissa Mayer Almost Killed AdSense (and she names Paul Buchheit as the real AdSense inventor)

nickb

The sad thing is that at bigger companies like IBM dozens and dozens of billion-dollar ideas have been rejected out of hand for no good reason, far out of line with unfortunate serendipity. IBM rejected xerography, minicomputers, personal computing, and ignored the work its researchers did on relational databases.Back in the 19th century, there were people who thought telephony was a lousy idea.Things will always be like this.

null

0

20

2007-09-04 20:34:25 UTC

50,156

50,154

henning

If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?

henning

Furthermore, links which appear to perform non-idempotent actions (voting) which are sent as GET requests seem kind of sketchy.Ever hear the horror story about what happens when Google rolls through your CMS that has the "delete" button as a link?

Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.

2

24

2007-09-04 20:40:25 UTC

50,157

50,079

joe

80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again

danw

I wouldn't buy Motorola to begin with. I bought my cell phone from Amazon.com, and the RAZR got pretty torn up in the reviews I read. So I opted for a Nokia, and have never been less than pleased with it.

null

3

8

2007-09-04 20:41:23 UTC

50,159

50,154

pg

If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?

henning

Because we're smart enough to realize that html is object code?For all I know, my macroexpansions are ugly too. The whole point is that I don't have to look at them.

Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.

1

24

2007-09-04 20:42:47 UTC

50,160

50,154

byrneseyeview

If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?

henning

I've wondered about that, too. One guess: it makes the design harder to steal (but not harder to copy). With CSS, you can just reuse someone else's format -- not so with spacer .gifs.

Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.

9

24

2007-09-04 20:43:09 UTC

50,163

50,064

mynameishere

When you are born, you know nothing

vuknje

Knowing how to learn is "something". And if you include non-conscious activities apart from those that involve systems normally considered conscious (bodily functions), then we "know" almost everything just in our brain stems.

null

3

16

2007-09-04 20:48:04 UTC

50,169

50,098

samb

My startup. Comments?

joe

i'd cut the initial sign-up form to the essentials.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

19

31

2007-09-04 21:03:49 UTC

50,172

50,167

steffon

Scientist maps own DNA

muriithi

What's also interesting are internet start-ups that will accept samples of your DNA, decode it, and then give you a profile of you genetic weaknesses. http://www.23andme.com/ http://www.navigenics.com/

null

0

2

2007-09-04 21:14:45 UTC

50,176

50,002

stuki

Telepresence: the next killer app (Cringely)

ph0rque

Video conference units are awesome in work from home developer scenarios. When collaborating on code, the ability to see the guy at the other end coding away, is soooo much better than wondering if he hung up or got disconnected when he stops talking to think or type. It really must be tried to be believed. (And understanding Indians is a lot easier when you can see as well as hear them:)). Also, with these things available, there is even less reason for developers not to work out of private offices. YC should convince Tandberg or Polycom to provide them some samples for a lower cost. I'm sure some founders could find ways to put them to good use, and the manufacturers could get some exposure in markets where they're not well represented.

null

2

8

2007-09-04 21:20:02 UTC

50,177

50,098

champion

My startup. Comments?

joe

Cool idea! Couple thoughts:- Agree that the front page is very busy and wordy.- I expected that you could click on any of the icons on the left (Code, Mail, Kit, etc.) to learn more about the offerings. "About" has more about the products, but I usually expect About to describe the founders or contact info, etc. - I would leave off all the "coming soon" features. Announce them when they are ready.- Agree with the poster that news.yc isn't your target market. I'd find some bands, buy them a coffee, have them look at your laptop & get their opinion.- Bonus comment ;-) Bands must get sick of trying to get their gigs listed on all the different sites (myspace, purevolume, etc.), having a solution that could push that info to all those different sites would be interesting part of promoting shows.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

3

31

2007-09-04 21:21:17 UTC

50,185

50,098

mattmaroon

My startup. Comments?

joe

Scriggle it. Just a little bit.

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

14

31

2007-09-04 21:29:32 UTC

50,186

50,098

sweeper

My startup. Comments?

joe

Scriggler is DEFINITELY the money. Guy who wrote it must be AWESOME. >.>

Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?

25

31

2007-09-04 21:30:42 UTC

50,189

50,154

rwalker

If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?

henning

One of the speakers at our YC session had a great quote: "It just doesn't matter." The site delivers interesting stories and commentary on a topic I care about - who cares what HTML it uses?

Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go.

0

24

2007-09-04 21:33:18 UTC

50,194

50,079

nickb

80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again

danw

RAZR is your typical form over function product: it looks great but performs horribly. Usability is absolute crap too.

null

4

8

2007-09-04 21:51:48 UTC