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50,196 | 50,098 |
limeade
|
My startup. Comments?
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joe
|
My attention span is far too short to understand what this is.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 7 | 31 |
2007-09-04 21:55:07 UTC
|
50,197 | 50,098 |
portLAN
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
Is this a YC applicant/winner?
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 22 | 31 |
2007-09-04 21:56:22 UTC
|
50,207 | 50,079 |
far33d
|
80% of RAZR owners would not buy Motorola again
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danw
|
What a funny consequence of having a massively successful product. The design was so successful, that they sold so many phones, that they lost tons of customers. If this were a failure in every way, then it wouldn't be as much of a problem for a brand. But because it was well executed in one dimension, it will be incredibly destructive.
| null | 0 | 8 |
2007-09-04 22:09:18 UTC
|
50,208 | 50,144 |
portLAN
|
John McCarthy turns 80
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tuukkah
|
Responding to Richard Dawkins's pestering his fellow atheists to "come out", I mention that I am indeed an atheist. To count oneself as an atheist one need not claim to have a proof that no gods exist. One need merely think that the evidence on the god question is in about the same state as the evidence on the werewolf question.Hopefully this will outrage lots of founders so they will refuse to use Lisp, thus giving me another competitive advantage.I would like to take this opportunity to recommend C#, PHP, and ASP.NET to my prospective competition. Oh, and especially Java.
| null | 0 | 13 |
2007-09-04 22:11:29 UTC
|
50,213 | 49,982 |
greendestiny
|
Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos credit Montessori education as a major factor in their success
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brlewis
|
Ok I'm really interested in Monterssori for my unborn child. So perhaps the graduates here can help me out a bit. Why is it a frozen curriculum? I appreciate Montessori made great improvements in teaching retarded children but surely any methodology advances?I guess you could say if it works why change it, but I'm suspicious of what seems like dogma.
| null | 5 | 23 |
2007-09-04 22:27:47 UTC
|
50,214 | 50,212 |
donna
|
New tech killing cinema, says Scott
|
donna
|
In my opinion, new tech brings me movies i want to view which might never make it to the big screen.
| null | 0 | 2 |
2007-09-04 22:27:58 UTC
|
50,216 | 50,154 |
portLAN
|
If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?
|
henning
|
CSS is ugly. For anyone who's used it throughout the years, it was consistently poorly-documented and incompatible across different browsers. Standards compliance? What's that? A lot of deprecated methods are still used because they work reliably, whereas the replacement often didn't, until much, much later. People remember the pain and bugginess and so you lose the early adopters even if the problems eventually get fixed. Cf. Apple III, g++, MySQL.
|
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.
| 3 | 24 |
2007-09-04 22:31:31 UTC
|
50,234 | 50,158 |
twism
|
Bill Gates: Allowing piracy in China was a great decision
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byrneseyeview
|
does apple do this? if not, they should consider doing the same thing
| null | 0 | 6 |
2007-09-04 23:13:30 UTC
|
50,239 | 50,098 |
rokhayakebe
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
Remember that album promoters who will use your site are most likely the one who promote their own work. So i would make that clear and loud. Instead of spending time and $ running around with posters and Flyers, this is the one place where they can do it all.
I like the SMS thing in it. You could add another simple feature where they can upload a piece of mp3 and distribute their own ringtone too. Good job man.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 23 | 31 |
2007-09-04 23:24:31 UTC
|
50,244 | 50,243 |
centipede
|
This would never convince a real manager, would it?
|
centipede
|
Parts of it read like a lisper's gospel praising macros.Quote:Consider another typical case, the need to fill in a template with data from a record. This might be to create a customer statement or invoice to be mailed, an HTML form to be displayed, or some other such form. Replacing specific character locations on the template by character data from the record can do this. Where the "_" represents the characters to be replaced, code something like the following does the job.into =: (# i.@#)@:=&'_'@:] }"1That was the code needed when the original article was written. Now an even shorter equivalent is:into =: I.@:=&'_'@:]}"1This is simpler than before and incidentally, it is also faster and requires less space.With a thing called "Record" containing an ASCII version of the record data with the same number of characters, as there are "_" positions on the character template called "Form". The phrase:Record into FormThen yields the desired result of a filled in form.
|
<b>A management perspective of the 'J' programming language - Updated 2004</b>Parts of it read like a lisper's gospel praising macros. <quote>Consider another typical case, the need to fill in a template with data from a record. This might be to create a customer statement or invoice to be mailed, an HTML form to be displayed, or some other such form. Replacing specific character locations on the template by character data from the record can do this. Where the "_" represents the characters to be replaced, code something like the following does the job.<p>into =: (# i.@#)@:=&'_'@:] }"1<p>That was the code needed when the original article was written. Now an even shorter equivalent is:<p>into =: I.@:=&'_'@:]}"1<p>This is simpler than before and incidentally, it is also faster and requires less space.<p>With a thing called "Record" containing an ASCII version of the record data with the same number of characters, as there are "_" positions on the character template called "Form". The phrase:<p>Record into Form<p>Then yields the desired result of a filled in form. </quote>
| 0 | 1 |
2007-09-04 23:33:31 UTC
|
50,245 | 50,206 |
dood
|
Opera 9.5 Alpha 1 Released Today
|
kingnothing
|
In a sane world, Opera and IE's market share would be reversed.
| null | 0 | 2 |
2007-09-04 23:38:35 UTC
|
50,252 | 50,098 |
david
|
My startup. Comments?
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joe
|
I have trouble reading the tiny text in the "what you get" boxes.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 17 | 31 |
2007-09-04 23:49:40 UTC
|
50,256 | 50,098 |
thinman
|
My startup. Comments?
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joe
|
Hey, scriggleit.com designer here. Thanks for the incredible feedback, seriously. I agree with 95% of you. Thanks for the complements.Feel free to drop me an email if your interested in some of my work bluecommons (at) gmail.com
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Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 11 | 31 |
2007-09-05 00:01:22 UTC
|
50,259 | 50,098 |
Alex3917
|
My startup. Comments?
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joe
|
Looks great. It's immediately obvious what it does, and the site design is attractive and clean. One suggestion though would be to rearrange the features. "Code" is more of an advanced feature since not every musician will understand how to embed code into an HTML page, and so it shouldn't be the lead item.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 9 | 31 |
2007-09-05 00:14:35 UTC
|
50,261 | 50,154 |
kcl
|
If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?
|
henning
|
Validating XHTML Strict does not increase your valuation.
|
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.
| 4 | 24 |
2007-09-05 00:17:58 UTC
|
50,263 | 50,243 |
cstejerean
|
This would never convince a real manager, would it?
|
centipede
|
"To a manager, the important insight is the very small amount required to achieve a significant result." I don't think I remember the last time my manager was impressed with how few lines of code solving a problem required. I think managers care more about how quickly a problem is solved, how well the solution works and how easy the code is to maintain."If other data manipulation is similarly simple, why should development require such large resources?"I'm not sure if saving on typing by using few symbols will reduce the amount of time required to build non-trivial applications. The limiting factor most of the time seems to be how fast one can think (and how many tries it takes to get something right). Programming languages can help this by allowing one to think at higher levels of abstractions.Another problem with developing non-trivial applications is the amount of time required for new people to get up to speed and understand the code base.While J might be a better language that C for data processing, I can think of many languages far better than C, Basic or Java for the task (like Python). I'd be curious how the article might have been written if it attempted to compare J with Python.
|
<b>A management perspective of the 'J' programming language - Updated 2004</b>Parts of it read like a lisper's gospel praising macros. <quote>Consider another typical case, the need to fill in a template with data from a record. This might be to create a customer statement or invoice to be mailed, an HTML form to be displayed, or some other such form. Replacing specific character locations on the template by character data from the record can do this. Where the "_" represents the characters to be replaced, code something like the following does the job.<p>into =: (# i.@#)@:=&'_'@:] }"1<p>That was the code needed when the original article was written. Now an even shorter equivalent is:<p>into =: I.@:=&'_'@:]}"1<p>This is simpler than before and incidentally, it is also faster and requires less space.<p>With a thing called "Record" containing an ASCII version of the record data with the same number of characters, as there are "_" positions on the character template called "Form". The phrase:<p>Record into Form<p>Then yields the desired result of a filled in form. </quote>
| 1 | 1 |
2007-09-05 00:20:49 UTC
|
50,264 | 50,221 |
cstejerean
|
Social Network Ad Spending Keeps Rising
|
steffon
|
indicates to me that for the most part advertising is more important in social networks than the actual product. with that in mind I wonder why there are so many new companies trying to create "social networking" sites (unless they all have boatloads of cash and can compete with the advertising budgets of the big players).
|
Projected $900MM in 2007, $1,380 in 2008.
| 0 | 2 |
2007-09-05 00:23:45 UTC
|
50,265 | 50,081 |
bharath
|
How Marissa Mayer Almost Killed AdSense (and she names Paul Buchheit as the real AdSense inventor)
|
nickb
|
I for one have never quite understood the whole argument with how gmail "reads" people's emails. Yes.. it does get a little spooky at times. But how much more spookier is it than Google (or for that matter any other search engine) keeping track of what you search for? Fact is, privacy is non-existent and the onus is on the end user to protect it.
| null | 2 | 20 |
2007-09-05 00:23:56 UTC
|
50,267 | 50,174 |
bharath
|
History of Boston VC's and the web (Cartoon)
|
theremora
|
Boston based VC's turning down all those deals comes as news to me. The laser sharp focus on monetization vs. utility is quite possibly the difference between a HBS type and a stanford type.
|
seen on Scott Kirshners blog
| 0 | 24 |
2007-09-05 00:28:17 UTC
|
50,268 | 50,219 |
cstejerean
|
The New Economics of Music, or, why stealing feels so right
|
steffon
|
interesting article, but i'm not sure if I agree. I think iTunes reduces a lot of the risk the article is revolving around (of buying something you didn't like in the first place). I think most P2P downloads are of songs one heard on the radio. If I wanted to discover new music I'd go for Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads.I can say from personal experience that when I was a student and was low on cash I felt bad about spending 20 dollars at a time on an album (out of which I liked a couple of songs). Buying songs from iTunes allowed me to buy what I wanted or get entire albums for $10 dollars. But even that didn't allow me to get all the music I wanted on a student budget.Now that I have a job I ended up spending hundreds of dollars on iTunes over time because for the most part it was less time consuming than finding the music on P2P networks. Once my time became valuable buying music started to make sense.
|
This article (part 1 and 2) has helped me think critically about new models for selling music, along with the process of discovering other kinds of user-generated content.
| 1 | 9 |
2007-09-05 00:29:06 UTC
|
50,280 | 50,098 |
staunch
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
Congratulations on the very nice idea and beautiful site.Critique: The top logo area is so tall that it pushes down the rest of the content down to half the page at lower resolutions. Definitely check it out in 1024x768 if you haven't.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 10 | 31 |
2007-09-05 01:19:38 UTC
|
50,291 | 50,174 |
nickb
|
History of Boston VC's and the web (Cartoon)
|
theremora
|
A bit too harsh but they got the gist of right :). Boston VCs are just way too risk averse. They prefer later, less risky, more conservative, stages.
|
seen on Scott Kirshners blog
| 2 | 24 |
2007-09-05 02:09:43 UTC
|
50,295 | 49,827 |
kingnothing
|
The Muller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)
|
pg
|
"But I also noticed that people in creative professions, such as artists or designers, often tend to like the 'ugly' combinations."I found that interesting. From looking at the top two samples, I preferred the "ugly" colors, as a set, next to the "pretty" colors, as a set.
| null | 2 | 35 |
2007-09-05 02:13:40 UTC
|
50,296 | 50,098 |
indie01
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
Nice! The only thing it lacks is a groovy favicon. Favicons can be one of the most memorable features of a website . . . and keeping with your target audience, I would suggest something like a music note. Otherwise, very nice site design, and a great idea. I so want to hide behind my code right now . . . way to make people like me feel all kinds of amateur. :)
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 8 | 31 |
2007-09-05 02:15:26 UTC
|
50,301 | 50,174 |
mattmaroon
|
History of Boston VC's and the web (Cartoon)
|
theremora
|
Exactly why almost every YC startup from the Boston batch that doesn't die immediately after ends up in the valley.
|
seen on Scott Kirshners blog
| 1 | 24 |
2007-09-05 02:29:05 UTC
|
50,306 | 50,303 |
rokhayakebe
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
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drm237
|
It is true that some names are completely ridiculous, but at the end i doubt that it really matters to users. What this blogger fail to realize is that some of the companies with the coolest names are completely worthless also.
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 7 | 11 |
2007-09-05 02:48:45 UTC
|
50,310 | 50,303 |
indie01
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
"Stupid" is such a subjective opinion. Individual brand-carving matters much more. . . immediate association is more relevant. These abstract names (wakoopa, frengo, squidoo) aren't really built upon any particular app of substance . . . it's a kind of reverse-branding that hurts in the long-run. Selling names works, but only a bit. Sooner or later, you have to sell substance.
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 5 | 11 |
2007-09-05 02:58:19 UTC
|
50,312 | 50,303 |
gscott
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
This reminds me from the Internet blowout a VC person investing in a company because of the name (I think it was liquidaudio). When it failed, all I could think about was that story and what possible qualifications that person had to be giving other people's money away.
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 6 | 11 |
2007-09-05 03:13:52 UTC
|
50,313 | 50,260 |
Jd
|
Inside the Googleplex
|
neilc
|
Don't know if anyone has seen this, but this was one of my favorite blogs for awhile: http://xooglers.blogspot.com/A lot of illuminating stories from the early days of Google. If this link ever starts working, it should display posts chronologically (which I strongly recommend): http://sitereservation.com/xooglers/
| null | 1 | 15 |
2007-09-05 03:15:54 UTC
|
50,318 | 50,303 |
dood
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
The problem is that the demand for desirable names is vastly higher than ever before, while the supply is limited [1]. Moreover, since there are now so many named things competing for attention, finding a name that stands out and is desirable is pretty hard.1. Interestingly, the market adaptation has been a slow erosion of the constraints on desirable names - 'Yahoo' and 'Google' sounded silly once upon a time, as did 'Flickr'. As the number of web apps increases, chances are the wackyness of the names, and people's tolerance for them will continue to expand.This probably bothers those in the biz far more than most people, since they see dozens of these things a day while normal users only see those few apps they use or stumble upon. Though a lot of the names of the also-rans and almost-rans are truely terrible.
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 1 | 11 |
2007-09-05 03:26:35 UTC
|
50,322 | 50,303 |
rms
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
I am absolutely delighted with all of my domain names.
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 8 | 11 |
2007-09-05 03:55:07 UTC
|
50,327 | 50,098 |
daniel-cussen
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
Get a good domain name, even if you have to pay a hundreds for it.
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 16 | 31 |
2007-09-05 04:10:11 UTC
|
50,331 | 50,303 |
blored
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
I don't like to quote Bob Parsons, but his essay describing the problem is second to none http://www.bobparsons.com/DomainKiting.htmlIt's called domain kiting/parking/squatting, and could be easily stopped if the ICANN introduced a non refundable deposit on a domain name.The key point from the article is this,- As it stands, domain names are fully refundable within 4 days. This causes million dollar corporations to buy domains in bulk, renew them every four days, and eventually buy domains that they think are profitable. In the mean time the average web-preneur sees no domains available.
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The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 0 | 11 |
2007-09-05 04:28:02 UTC
|
50,337 | 50,212 |
cstejerean
|
New tech killing cinema, says Scott
|
donna
|
the internet is definitely allowing independent studios and artists to release movies that would otherwise not make the cut for cinema due to the audience size or advertising budget. on the other hand most people I know still go out to theaters to watch movies (unless the movie is not that great and people will wait for the DVD release). I never got around to watching movies on a video iPod or other mobile devices. I might occasionally watch a movie on my laptop if traveling but for the most part movies look a lot better on a decent TV with good sound.
| null | 1 | 2 |
2007-09-05 05:12:03 UTC
|
50,339 | 50,303 |
sgraham
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
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drm237
|
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article about naming phones with cryptic numbers earlier. Random strings of vowels in non-words are just as memorable as KR344-a I'd say.Hmm, maybe I should register kr344-a.com just to be safe though.
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The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 3 | 11 |
2007-09-05 05:21:57 UTC
|
50,340 | 50,279 |
SwellJoe
|
Joe Kraus - Confessions of a Startup Addict
|
binnymathews
|
Joe Kraus is among my favorite speakers. He's smart, humble, enthusiastic, and funny. Well worth paying attention to. (Not just because he built a multi-billion dollar company.)
| null | 0 | 10 |
2007-09-05 05:24:45 UTC
|
50,341 | 50,198 |
binnymathews
|
Prism: Coalition of journal publishers fighting free online access to research
|
pg
|
I spent 5 minutes or so looking at this. So I may be wrong. But it looks like their primary concern happens to be government making publications available for free online download rather than through journals that cost money. It seems to be that this would be a step in the right direction. I think many people in academia realize that the journal/conference method of publication is broken -- for the following reasons:
-- Turnaround time (esp for journals) is unreasonably long
-- Authors usually dont know who their reviewers are. Comments are anonymous
-- Authors dont have a chance to give a rebuttal. A rejection is final and bindingI think a digg/reddit style of weighted karma would work much better. Weighted = authors with greater influence in the community have greater say in whether or not a paper gets published. Comments can be non anonymous and authors have a chance at rebuttal which means that they have an opportunity to influence opinion and votes as the paper is being reviewed.The downside of not having such a system in place is painfully obvious to anyone who has spent some time in academia I think. Even prestigious conferences such as ACM SIGCOMM have often been accused of running as cliques.
| null | 0 | 6 |
2007-09-05 05:41:21 UTC
|
50,342 | 50,329 |
steffon
|
Cory Doctorow: Can giving away free electronic books really sell printed books?
|
rms
|
This makes sense to me for publishers and writers that aren't in the top 25% of books being sold. Marketing for many consumables can be thought of as a two-step diffusion process: Diffusion step 1. Utilize the mass-media to send your product message toward a target audience. Diffusion step 2. Hope that the early adopters and opinion leaders within those audiences tell their friends and exercise their networks of influence so that "word-of-mouth" perpetuates the message first sent by the mass-media.For many cultural product industries, like publishing, they release many more products then they can afford to buy mass-media advertising campaigns for. For those products without mass-media coverage, it makes a lot of sense to give away free copies of the book. The innovators and early adopters that crave and promote new products have the material they need to jumpstart the second step of the diffusion process (word-of-mouth), and a publisher and writer could see higher sales numbers than they otherwise would have: they still benefit from second stage diffusion without the mass-media costs.And if there is a concern that the "message would get out" that the book is free online, the publisher could only give away the first 12,000 free online. It seems like putting a cap on free copies could maximize the potential of "word-of-mouth" diffusion and limit the risk of lost sales.
| null | 0 | 5 |
2007-09-05 05:52:55 UTC
|
50,343 | 50,303 |
brezina
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...The original LA Times and Seattle Times article mentioned Xobni and said, "Many names come with little context. Firms such as Xobni, Meebo and Squidoo give no hint of what they might do (e-mail management, instant messaging and online recommendations, respectively)."What? No hint of what we do? They should have talked to us. It's inbox spelled backwards!
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 2 | 11 |
2007-09-05 05:58:21 UTC
|
50,344 | 50,286 |
cstejerean
|
The Creativity Imperative - Nurturing Nature
|
ahsonwardak
|
the link for this is not working, most likely a copy and paste issue. the real URL is belowhttp://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/08/the-c...
| null | 0 | 1 |
2007-09-05 06:01:50 UTC
|
50,345 | 50,292 |
cstejerean
|
Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Promotion? Ignored
|
bootload
|
very interesting, i wouldn't have guessed that people would have a hard time seeing the number written in big bold letters but it seems to make sense
| null | 0 | 3 |
2007-09-05 06:06:37 UTC
|
50,347 | 50,298 |
cstejerean
|
Article on Micropledge.com
|
dfens
|
i'm thinking of pledging some money for some ycnews features, like keyboard navigation
| null | 0 | 1 |
2007-09-05 06:08:47 UTC
|
50,351 | 50,309 |
cstejerean
|
Why is X not written in Lisp?
|
nickb
|
I love this part"We give up on this idea, and write the more C-like: xf->info.nprops=2;
if((xf->info.props=xalloc(xf->info.nprops*sizeof(FontPropRec)))==0)
return BadAlloc;
if((xf->info.isStringProp=xalloc(2))==0) {
xfree(xf->info.props);
return BadAlloc;
}
xf->info.props[0].name=MakeAtom("FONTNAME");
xf->info.props[0].value=MakeAtom("FOO");
xf->info.isStringProp[0]=1;
xf->info.props[1].name=MakeAtom("POINTSIZE");
xf->info.props[1].value=5;
xf->info.isStringProp[1]=0;
Which, of course, means that if we add some code that allocates data earlier on, we have to manually update all the emergency deallocations. Oh, well!At this point, the reader is advised to consider the initial Lisp code again: (setf (font-properties xf) '(:fontname "FOO" :pointsize 5))
and notice how much more explicit and simple the C code is."
| null | 0 | 3 |
2007-09-05 06:19:35 UTC
|
50,353 | 50,314 |
cstejerean
|
Install Third-Party Applications on Your iPhone
|
nickb
|
neat article but most of this has been around for a while. i'm surprised that people are already looking to make money off this by releasing a book
| null | 0 | 2 |
2007-09-05 06:36:04 UTC
|
50,355 | 50,325 |
cstejerean
|
The Morning Norm - What Do All Entrepreneurs Have in Common?
|
ordersup
|
this is great news. i've always hoped that after I make some money with some tech startup I'll open up my own restaurant. I must be on the right track :)
| null | 0 | 2 |
2007-09-05 06:45:26 UTC
|
50,357 | 50,329 |
cstejerean
|
Cory Doctorow: Can giving away free electronic books really sell printed books?
|
rms
|
I tend to agree with the views expressed in this article. I can't stand reading books on a computer. Having an online format makes certain things more convenient like quickly looking up something in a reference book (beats flipping pages). Having an online copy of the book (for example with Amazon's search inside this book feature) has allowed me to get a better idea if I really want to buy the book (and in the case of Amazon led me to promptly add the item to my cart).
| null | 1 | 5 |
2007-09-05 06:53:19 UTC
|
50,358 | 50,334 |
cstejerean
|
Microsoft Pondering iPhone Killer?
|
nreece
|
for all the iphone critics out there I hope Microsoft's iPhone killer will do all the things you are complaining the iPhone doesn't. So far I haven't had luck with Windows Mobile on my phones. The last phone I owned with a MS OS on it needed to be rebooted several times a day.
| null | 1 | 1 |
2007-09-05 06:57:56 UTC
|
50,366 | 50,362 |
cstejerean
|
What should be the skill set of the founders for a start-up in the early stages?
|
JohnnyRB
|
I think one of the most important thing in the early stages (of a tech startup) is building a prototype to show others what the idea is really about. I think this requires a good mix of programming and design. Most of the time good design is not needed for the initial prototype but that depends on what you're making.To fully answer your question I'll say that it depends on the way you plan on creating value and what you need to prove your idea. If you have a new idea for a better way for people to interact with the cable TV then design will probably be the most important first step. If you plan to revolutionize a business process by bringing it online then a good understanding of the business and enough programming ability to build a prototype (you're not trying to solve a hard problem here, just create a decent website) is far more important then the design. For example I currently work for a company that has product that looks terrible (by my standards) and yet it's doing great in terms of growth because it solved the right problem.
|
What should be the skill set - programming, design, marketing, etc. - for a start-up in the early stages? Put differently, what are the skills that should be present in the founders (and what would be the ideal distribution among them)?
| 0 | 1 |
2007-09-05 07:26:13 UTC
|
50,369 | 50,352 |
run4yourlives
|
Is your site provocative enough? (i.e. competing for attention)
|
steffon
|
Damn, and here I thought Sierra was posting again.Good post nonetheless.
|
Summary:Be Visual
Be Different--Break Patterns and Expectations
Be Daring
Change Things Regularly
Inspire Curiosity
Pose a Challenge
Be Controversial and Committed
Be Fun
Be Stimulating. Be Exciting. Be Seductive
Help them have Hi-Res ExperiencesAll good things to remind oneself when developing a product (or at least the homepage/brand).
| 0 | 2 |
2007-09-05 07:50:05 UTC
|
50,374 | 50,330 |
michaelneale
|
With Apologies to Robert Frost
|
divia
|
genius.
| null | 1 | 26 |
2007-09-05 08:21:44 UTC
|
50,375 | 50,154 |
orionlogic
|
If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?
|
henning
|
It's hard to comment in this one i think.
Yes, it's lame to use spacer GIFs as a design standpoint, with all web community try to separate meaningless technique's (tables, spacers,&nbsp; etc...) from documents.However for this web site, Yes it just doesn't matter.The functionality become more important.There is news link and comment section with a clean interface. Not much black ink.If you are in this situation, it doesn't matter but with your new startup's i think its better stick with the notion of separating mark-up with design.I can't keep silent to those anti-css comments but don't know where to start...i think web started as a way of exchanging "documents" between computers. So in basic terms what you see in your screen is "a document" so it should be seen as " a document". without css in html code what you see is...well some kind of hectic ASCII art."It is a valuable thing if your page seen as a document"i sometimes think that, under the supervision of PG, a small design team (designer, info. arch. & UI person) "may" help founded startups to achieve better in their goals.
|
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.
| 5 | 24 |
2007-09-05 08:30:08 UTC
|
50,376 | 50,372 |
tempo
|
So I got a startup job
|
tempo
|
All feedback welcome
|
Hi. This, my first blog post, explains what I learned in the process of getting a startup job in the Valley. Feedback of all kinds is welcome: from typos and style to things I'm so wrong about.
| 3 | 23 |
2007-09-05 08:31:27 UTC
|
50,381 | 50,303 |
wouter
|
Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?
|
drm237
|
As one of the founders of Wakoopa, I know it's really hard to find a good name for your (internet) company AND be able to buy the corresponding domain name relatively cheap. As people pointed out above, "Google" and "Yahoo" also didn't describe the service they are offering and also are not really pronounceable without spelling. In the end, it's all about the service the company is offering and we're pretty sure that we're doing okay in this department.More here: http://blog.wakoopa.com/archives/whats-in-a-name
|
The search for a unique corporate name and identity may be backfiring in the Silicon Valley, according to an amusing article in last week's Los Angeles Times. Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo or Meebo all might be acceptable on an individual basis. But when every startup in the Valley begins opting for whimsy (and a non-stop barrage of vowels) over, well, making sense, the results can be less than desirable.
| 4 | 11 |
2007-09-05 09:10:02 UTC
|
50,384 | 50,144 |
michaelneale
|
John McCarthy turns 80
|
tuukkah
|
(happy-birthday)
| null | 1 | 13 |
2007-09-05 09:32:53 UTC
|
50,386 | 49,968 |
jgamman
|
Steve Yegge: Good Agile, Bad Agile
|
joshwa
|
didn't i read some of that in an old JoSoftware article? the "just a big ol' pile of work" bit seems to be how he describes PM using his bugtracker - maybe there's a 4th place that does software development well: Fog Creek.
| null | 1 | 30 |
2007-09-05 09:44:10 UTC
|
50,390 | 50,380 |
rms
|
Sunday's Solutions
|
augy
|
It's a good idea, but it doesn't have to be Paul Graham posting the problem. Anyone can do this on any day they want.
|
In the essay Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas, PG states"Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas for two or three new startups. The articles are full of descriptions of problems that need to be solved."This statement gave me an idea for YCnews. What if every Sunday (usually a slow news day) PG posts an article from the Wall Street Journal or any other publication, but instead of people just giving their opinions they gave their solutions to the problems presented in the article? People could then up-vote the solutions they liked the best. This would get everyone's thoughts flowing in the right direction, which is forward towards creation and innovation.
| 0 | 12 |
2007-09-05 10:25:37 UTC
|
50,392 | 50,380 |
dood
|
Sunday's Solutions
|
augy
|
Isn't that pretty much what happens with most links anyway?
|
In the essay Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas, PG states"Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas for two or three new startups. The articles are full of descriptions of problems that need to be solved."This statement gave me an idea for YCnews. What if every Sunday (usually a slow news day) PG posts an article from the Wall Street Journal or any other publication, but instead of people just giving their opinions they gave their solutions to the problems presented in the article? People could then up-vote the solutions they liked the best. This would get everyone's thoughts flowing in the right direction, which is forward towards creation and innovation.
| 1 | 12 |
2007-09-05 10:36:42 UTC
|
50,395 | 50,394 |
bootload
|
What We Do, More Than Money, Format & Philosophy
|
bootload
|
"... Why are we so flexible? Not (just) because we're nice people. We realize that, as it gets cheaper to start a company, the balance of power is shifting from investors to hackers. ..."
"... All venture investors supply some combination of money and help. In our case the money is by far the smaller component. ..."
"... One of the least publicized things we do, for obvious reasons, is mediate disputes between founders. No startup thinks they're going to need that, but most do at some point. ..."
".... We realize that independence is one of the reasons people want to start startups in the first place. And frankly, it's also one of the reasons startups succeed. Investors who try to control the companies they fund often end up destroying them. ..."
A nice read & certainly offering some insights I have not previously read.
| null | 0 | 13 |
2007-09-05 10:51:00 UTC
|
50,399 | 50,380 |
yubrew
|
Sunday's Solutions
|
augy
|
This is a good way of identifying problems, but unless it is for a problem hackers can identify with, we may not be the best people to suggest solutions. Ask the people that are most frustrated with that problem, that need to deal with it most frequently about how important it is, and potential solutions you are thinking about.
|
In the essay Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas, PG states"Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas for two or three new startups. The articles are full of descriptions of problems that need to be solved."This statement gave me an idea for YCnews. What if every Sunday (usually a slow news day) PG posts an article from the Wall Street Journal or any other publication, but instead of people just giving their opinions they gave their solutions to the problems presented in the article? People could then up-vote the solutions they liked the best. This would get everyone's thoughts flowing in the right direction, which is forward towards creation and innovation.
| 3 | 12 |
2007-09-05 11:18:32 UTC
|
50,400 | 50,271 |
dpapathanasiou
|
Why So Many Want to Create Facebook Applications
|
bootload
|
The analogy to MS Windows is accurate, and it seems people have forgotten (or are too young to remember?) the downside of writing for a closed platform controlled by one company.The shift to web applications was supposed to change that (http://paulgraham.com/road.html).
| null | 0 | 6 |
2007-09-05 11:19:02 UTC
|
50,401 | 50,260 |
dpapathanasiou
|
Inside the Googleplex
|
neilc
|
Jeremy Allison wrote something similar last year:I do worry about how things will be at Google when the money gets tight. And the money always gets tight. I've played the role of Banquo's ghost at enough Silicon Valley startup feasts to know how these stories can end.(http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/193)
| null | 0 | 15 |
2007-09-05 11:23:40 UTC
|
50,402 | 50,367 |
dpapathanasiou
|
Japan's Government to Waste $130 Million Fighting Google
|
staunch
|
Competing against Google is not necessarily foolish, but doing it under the auspices of a large government program is.
| null | 0 | 8 |
2007-09-05 11:27:46 UTC
|
50,403 | 50,098 |
pistoriusp
|
My startup. Comments?
|
joe
|
It would be interesting, and possibly profitable, to take the user information provided to you by the bands and figure out which combination of bands would do well in an area if they did a concert together... shrug
|
Wondering what you all think of this. Does it make sense? Would you use it? Comments in general?
| 15 | 31 |
2007-09-05 11:33:55 UTC
|
50,408 | 50,405 |
dood
|
What Comes After the Information Age?
|
dpapathanasiou
|
This is pretty useless without a definition of the term 'information age' and the notion of 'value'.The only way this could be more vauge and lacking in meaning is if it was the wikipedia article on the Information Age: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_age]
| null | 0 | 3 |
2007-09-05 12:02:38 UTC
|
50,410 | 50,198 |
jgamman
|
Prism: Coalition of journal publishers fighting free online access to research
|
pg
|
this group is pure evil. it's been roundly whumped on the scienceblogs network (yeah, that's real scientists, not PR paid lackeys for the walled garden science press).
PLoS is the future. R&D without access to the primary literature is impossible. we get scientists to do research who have to publish in these journals and then universities have to pay to subscribe. if you think getting people to send you the manuscripts (who also do the reviewing) that you then bind and sell back to the same people is a bit off, you're not alone.
| null | 2 | 6 |
2007-09-05 12:20:01 UTC
|
50,418 | 48,294 |
yamada
|
How Not to Die
|
subhash
|
Look - here's my point sans babble-bot 2.0 software: In ANY new endeavor, you need to have balance. Balance is the pre-requisite to the power you need to make it. The young, naive entrepreneur is supposed to focus on success because this re-weights the equation to give his enthusiasm a higher co-effecient. BUT - this has to be tempered a more mature, wiser presence who builds up your will to overcome and helps you refine your model by discouraging and criticizing you. I know this sounds dysfunctional but it's reality. You don't built muscle by having weights which help you pull them up while writing articles to encourage you to continue. You do so by finding the will to push inside yourself while the weights push against you. If you have a mentor who just blows sunshine and rainbows at you, how will you ever find and develop your entrepreneurial muscles? The other point is that enthusiasm has to be tempered by a cold hard calculation of reality. Not that either is more important - reality is in flux but enthusiasm only goes so far at some moments. Balance. This article just seems to convey a "you think you can do it, we think you can do it, and let's meet every week in a friendly mutual admiration society where everybody thinks they can do it." Cult-like. Aren't you better off in the long run meeting up with people who hate your guts and point out 30 flaws in your idea, so that you can get that much stronger by fixing 20 of them? Sure. It is harsh and brutal. Welcome to the real world of business. The operating motto is, "If you can be discouraged, you should be discouraged." All this article seems to do in my mind is change that to, "If you can be discouraged, well then we'll put you in an artificial environment where you'll receive a lot of outside encouragement at the cost to you of finding ways to develop your own ability to encourage yourself." And it never seems to cover the very real issue of "what if you just don't make it?" You know that venture capital adage of "1 in 10 of our companies go on hit the big time and that's all that matters!"? If that were true, well them we would be awash in thousands of Yahoos and Googles and YouTubes. But we're not. So the odds of making it are at best calculated wrong and at worst lied about. But if you got financing from smart VCs, that means you must have passed many, many prequalifying criteria. So why do you wind up statistically likely to not make it? I'm sure somebody will say, "Well, at YC, OUR criteria is far more clever and wise than any VC, so if you get in YC, your odds of making already are that much greater."
In the end, you need an adult to say - go like gang-busters for 6 months, then if you don't see minimum this that and the other goals met, move on. Leaving it open-ended with a "just keep trying" approach only gives you the impression that if you just hang on, maybe next month will be that special one ... or the next month ... or the next one ... how then do you know it's not next year? Or the one after that? Or next decade? There are plenty of entrepreneurs whose idea was a decade ahead of its time. What happens to them after they maxed out 50 credit cards and mortgaged their homes? Nobody knows because in polite entrepreneurial society, it's best not to talk about very real risks. But ignoring them doesn't make them go away and being really, really committed doesn't reduce them very much. I'm not being pessimistic. I applaud you folks. But I find this go-go cheerleader coaching style dangerous. Hitting the weight room and getting up early in the morning, putting your sneakers on and going for a run will prepare you better for the big game. Listening to the cheerleaders tell you how great you are and how much they believe in you is only setting you up for a rude awakening.
| null | 53 | 169 |
2007-09-05 13:05:03 UTC
|
50,419 | 50,407 |
brlewis
|
New Version Of Barcode Maker : Great features
|
omarabid
|
I didn't understand why this was killed until I saw omarabid's other submissions: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=omarabid
|
New Version Of Barcode Maker : Great features
| 0 | 1 |
2007-09-05 13:11:31 UTC
|
50,420 | 50,372 |
mattculbreth
|
So I got a startup job
|
tempo
|
Sounds good. What kind of work will you be doing?
|
Hi. This, my first blog post, explains what I learned in the process of getting a startup job in the Valley. Feedback of all kinds is welcome: from typos and style to things I'm so wrong about.
| 2 | 23 |
2007-09-05 13:12:18 UTC
|
50,426 | 50,198 |
ivankirigin
|
Prism: Coalition of journal publishers fighting free online access to research
|
pg
|
I don't quite get it. They cry censorship, but then want to continue keeping research behind the wall of payment.All professors I've met would love to have more people read their papers. The way to do this is to make them open.I understand the need for peer-review, but I don't see the need for it to be expensive. A non-profit group could start peer-review.org. It would be a social network of researchers that rate the skills of other researchers. Ratings and reviews of papers submitted to the site would be scaled with something like a page-rank algorithm based on the collective reputation of the reviewers. The highest ranked papers would be presented on the front page of the topic area. Topic areas could be extremely customizable to precise niches.It's interesting that the voting schemes of social news sites could be applied to the problem.A final note, the following search works wonders to find gated papers:
"[paper name]" filetype:pdf
| null | 1 | 6 |
2007-09-05 13:53:26 UTC
|
50,433 | 50,409 |
rwebb
|
My Web 2.0 Application. Feedback wanted
|
prime0196
|
really cool idea. i can only get the "L" key to work on your blogspot page, but i think there is lots of potential. the keyboard is essentially dead when you're looking at a website...never thought of that before!
|
The name of my application is Launchkey www.launchkey.com . It is a content monetization application for blogs/video websites. The core technology allows users to conduct searches within a website using keystrokes, but also can be used for links, images, and video.Here are a few demos:
blog:http://launchkey.blogspot.com
video:http://launchkey.net/bunny
images:http://launchkey.net/vickI currently have a new feature set rolling out soon, but I would like the opinion of this audience just in case the changes that I'm making aren't on target.I have applied to Y/C for the winter session and I think my chances are slim because I don't have a Co-Founder. So if your a hacker with skills in this space, drop me a line (javascript.atlanta(at)gmail.com)
| 1 | 3 |
2007-09-05 14:12:37 UTC
|
50,442 | 50,431 |
davidw
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
The colors/layout give me a headache.
|
thoughts?
| 2 | 17 |
2007-09-05 14:28:50 UTC
|
50,446 | 50,431 |
chengmi
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
I'd like to see the numeric rank next to the link.
|
thoughts?
| 17 | 17 |
2007-09-05 14:47:21 UTC
|
50,455 | 50,431 |
mynameishere
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
Drop the google ads until you get serious traffic.
|
thoughts?
| 16 | 17 |
2007-09-05 15:02:22 UTC
|
50,459 | 50,431 |
DougBTX
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
The line spacing for the list of links is quite small, it makes the page feel quite cramped for me. Notice how the links on bloomberg.com are about twice as far apart. You could also put more space around your logo, again like bloomberg.com. Not sure about the serif font.
|
thoughts?
| 7 | 17 |
2007-09-05 15:08:30 UTC
|
50,462 | 50,154 |
falsestprophet
|
If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs?
|
henning
|
Thank you for bringing the fact that Paul Graham's unreleased programming language does not yet have a mature web development framework to our attention.
|
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.
| 7 | 24 |
2007-09-05 15:09:35 UTC
|
50,463 | 50,431 |
whyleyc
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
Looks like the jobs page is not picking up your stylesheet ? I see borders round the logo and the major links have default HTML formatting.
|
thoughts?
| 11 | 17 |
2007-09-05 15:09:42 UTC
|
50,468 | 50,456 |
byrneseyeview
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
See also: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-w...
| null | 10 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:13:50 UTC
|
50,473 | 50,436 |
Jd
|
I Think You're Fat: The Radical Honesty Movement
|
charzom
|
This is stupid fucking shit.(I think the implicit message of the article is that the addition of 'fucking' to any statement makes it inherently more honest, hence the above).
| null | 1 | 53 |
2007-09-05 15:25:00 UTC
|
50,475 | 50,219 |
colortone
|
The New Economics of Music, or, why stealing feels so right
|
steffon
|
I started a facebook group yesterday to discuss all aspects of Bubblegeneration/Umair Haque, FYI:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5842972550Obviously, the game is in reducing search costs.The REAL issue I see here for all these "music recommendation" startups is that they still are nowhere near competing with quality human DJ/knowledge.There are thousands of music supervisors, party Dj's, and just general record nerds whose recommendations/playlists CRUSH last.fm, et al.Somebody needs to build the Digg of music, moderated by people with real music knowledge.That's the moneymaker.All this implicit listening information is garbage.
|
This article (part 1 and 2) has helped me think critically about new models for selling music, along with the process of discovering other kinds of user-generated content.
| 0 | 9 |
2007-09-05 15:27:14 UTC
|
50,476 | 50,456 |
Jd
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
Analogue: no one ever gets penalized for upvoting comments that have already been upvoted several times.Same basic idea.
| null | 8 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:28:35 UTC
|
50,477 | 50,456 |
rfrey
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
As always, a convincing case, well edited. :) Paul's point probably plays even better among Hacker News readers, who are probably more suspicious than the average bear of college in general.Seems to me there's an extra factor contributing to the longevity of the "which school" criterion. There are other roles in the business (especially larger businesses) such as biz dev, M&A, etc. where attending an elite school might enhance success considerably - not for the academic content learned, but for the network of friends and colleagues you gain at that school. It's the English Grammar School model of corporate success.s Paul points out, hiring decisions are often made by HR types: but HR is a very extroverted, business process focussed profession. As personalities, and in job description, the HR folks have more in common with the people and roles that do benefit from elite school connections than with technical people for whom the elite school is irrelevant. Like all of us, they apply lessons from familiar situations to more unfamiliar situations. And so the Stanford Screen lives on.
| null | 13 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:28:50 UTC
|
50,479 | 50,431 |
mattculbreth
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
I think you've got something nice here. I personally don't care for the color scheme or the letter-based voting, but as you mentioned your likely user base will be comfortable with that. Probably a good move.I'd actually use more line spacing between news stories though. It feels a bit too cramped to me. I agree with other comments about the ads too--lose them for now.
|
thoughts?
| 0 | 17 |
2007-09-05 15:36:46 UTC
|
50,483 | 50,456 |
ecuzzillo
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
Two points: 1) It does seem to matter for at least CS grad school, as was said in Undergraduation, because of research opportunities. So if you just want to start a web startup and get rich, fine, but if you want to go to grad school after you get rich, not so fine. 2) I've taken classes at CMU, Berkeley, and Stanford, and while the differences didn't particularly correlate with the rankings (since the relative rankings of those three places in CS get permuted regularly anyway), there were serious differences in attitude and rigor. CMU and Berkeley were both very rigorous; the difference was that CMU was rigorous in a somewhat more pointless, soul-sucking manner, on average, and didn't explain things as well. Stanford was somewhat less rigorous, which I imagine was because of the Ivy-league difficult-to-get-in but easy-to-pass phenomenon. This seems to correlate somewhat with the number of undergrads at each place involved in research; at both CMU and Berkeley, I know many undergrads involved in research, while the one professor I talk to at Stanford hungrily scrounges for the rare undergrad who's good at research. So there are differences in curriculum and selection, I think; they're just not particularly amazing predictors of success. They certainly should influence the decision of which colleges to apply to, though.
| null | 4 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:45:05 UTC
|
50,484 | 50,436 |
sethg
|
I Think You're Fat: The Radical Honesty Movement
|
charzom
|
Cf. James Morrow's novella City of Truth (http://www.amazon.com/City-Truth-Harvest-James-Morrow/dp/015...)
| null | 3 | 53 |
2007-09-05 15:47:23 UTC
|
50,485 | 50,456 |
jedberg
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
When I was in college, I figured out that the education you get doesn't really change. However, what does change is the people that you are associating with.At the "elite" colleges, there is a greater percentage of smart students, which lends itself to more productive discussions and more difficult tests that force you to challenge yourself. Also, it is like the difference between the regular classes in high school and advanced classes -- in the advanced classes you cover the same material, but with greater breadth and a deeper understanding.And the number 1 biggest advantage of going to an elite college is that you have a much better chance of meeting the world's future movers and shakers -- the people that will be the educational and business leaders of the next generation. That alone is a good reason to go to an elite college.So I have to disagree, and say that there are indeed advantages to going to an elite college, just not the advantages that most people think.
| null | 5 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:47:58 UTC
|
50,486 | 50,436 |
corentin
|
I Think You're Fat: The Radical Honesty Movement
|
charzom
|
There is an acceptable line between a world full of Enron executives and a world full of Diogenes.
| null | 6 | 53 |
2007-09-05 15:48:11 UTC
|
50,489 | 50,456 |
irrelative
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
This essay seems to resonate with another Paul Graham theme -- to avoid prestige while choosing a job. His point then is that you are never compensated for prestige, so you might as well stay away from it.It looks to me like the education market is starting to catch up with the job market. Prestige in either area probably means that you're paying too much or being paid too little.
| null | 15 | 103 |
2007-09-05 15:56:54 UTC
|
50,496 | 50,493 |
brett
|
Sun seeks 1-for-4 reverse stock split
|
brett
|
With this and changing the ticker symbol to JAVA someone is really driving hard in the Sun PR department.
| null | 0 | 1 |
2007-09-05 16:00:31 UTC
|
50,498 | 50,456 |
cperciva
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
I did my D.Phil. at Oxford University, and my B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University; while SFU is one of Canada's best universities, it clearly doesn't have the stature of Oxford or Harvard. Were the students at Oxford more intelligent than the students at SFU? No. Were they more motivated? No. Are there jobs for which I'd rather hire an Oxford alumnus than an SFU alumnus? Absolutely.The largest advantage of a great university like Oxford is in increasing the range and depth of ideas presented to students. It's impossible to completely separate the teaching role of a university from its research role: Teaching (and inconvenient questions asked by irritating students, like yours truly, in class) informs research, and research informs teaching. And quite apart from the "indigenous" research, if you're at a minor university without a strong reputation for research, you don't have Knuth dropping by for a few months, or Rivest visiting to give a lecture (albeit about the rather odd notion of obtaining forward security by using a stream of broadcasted random numbers which is too fast to be stored).There are undeniable advantages to being at a great university in being exposed to new ideas. Why haven't PG et al. noticed this? Probably because their measurement -- can someone create a successful startup? -- is just as biased as everyone else's measurements. After all, when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new?
| null | 7 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:01:45 UTC
|
50,502 | 50,456 |
rams
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
Peter Norvig in his essay "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" says,
"If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.
# Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (because they make you do it for them)." He is referring to Jamie Zawinski.
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
| null | 2 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:06:23 UTC
|
50,503 | 50,436 |
run4yourlives
|
I Think You're Fat: The Radical Honesty Movement
|
charzom
|
aka: The Life Going Nowhere Fast Movement.
| null | 8 | 53 |
2007-09-05 16:06:30 UTC
|
50,505 | 50,456 |
jey
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
Anyone have that awesome quote from Bowling for Columbine where Moore is interviewing South Park co-creator Matt Stone and Stone explains the supposed consequences of not getting into honors classes in the 3rd grade?
| null | 26 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:09:03 UTC
|
50,508 | 50,431 |
donna
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
I'd use this but the color scheme is too hard on my eyes as well; doesn't allow me to spend a lot of time reading. I'd also like to have the ability to make comments on the story and hear the chatter of others. It would be nice to be able to look-up stock quotes. Thanks, nice start.
|
thoughts?
| 6 | 17 |
2007-09-05 16:11:48 UTC
|
50,512 | 50,456 |
michael_nielsen
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
How was the data analysed? The most obvious way, and the way the essay seems to imply, is simply to look for correlations between success / failure and which school the founders attended. If this is how it was done, then the conclusion is flawed. All it shows is that the school doesn't matter, conditional on being accepted by YC (rather than rejected). This is a completely different conclusion than the one the essay reaches, namely that the school doesn't matter, period.
| null | 12 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:15:04 UTC
|
50,514 | 50,456 |
aston
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
First, I'd just like to point out that PG is in an interesting place to report that college doesn't matter, having himself attended two Ivy League schools. There are two arguments happening here. The first is that entrepreneurship and business success are not so well correlated with where you go to undergrad. The second is that where you go to college doesn't make much of a difference in life in general. I won't really quarrel with the first, since it's been demonstrated pretty often, and YC's results support it as well. The second, on the other hand...The main problem with trying to assert that college doesn't make a difference in life is that there's really no easy measurement you can do over "net change" in life. That's due both to the long span of time a life consumes as well as the complex and/or fuzzy cause-effect relationships that are at play throughout. At best, I think, you would need to argue over objective differences that have some immediate effect, and then hope that those actually do make a difference. As an example, here are some of the things that I think made Paul Graham successful that are pretty strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard: - he met RTM and Trevor there- he got to spend his time in Boston, where he's acknowledged startups can thrive- being able to drop the H-bomb almost certainly helped give credibility to his company- he learned Lisp (not really the most popular language at the time, except at certain places)Would Viaweb have happened had he gone elsewhere, or skipped grad school altogether? Well, maybe. But I doubt it. Harvard's name is what convened the talent (peers, advisors, mentors, investors) that shaped much of that company, and it's there that Harvard's value lies. I think this essay horribly undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your university is amazing.
| null | 3 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:17:14 UTC
|
50,518 | 50,456 |
vegashacker
|
Paul Graham: News from the Front
|
mattculbreth
|
This is the first of PG's essays I've seen with comments at the bottom. It seems they're brought to us courtesy of Disqus, a YC startup.http://paulgraham.disqus.com/news_from_the_front/
| null | 30 | 103 |
2007-09-05 16:19:30 UTC
|
50,522 | 50,431 |
nreece
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
My one suggestion: invert the color scheme to black on white. It will make the site look more professional.
|
thoughts?
| 13 | 17 |
2007-09-05 16:23:17 UTC
|
50,524 | 50,431 |
kyro
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
I think it'd be handy to have tool where users can type in or mark certain companies they'd like to follow, and then get a feed of all the recent news pertaining to said company.
|
thoughts?
| 1 | 17 |
2007-09-05 16:24:15 UTC
|
50,526 | 50,431 |
vegashacker
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
I don't know much about this world, but it seems like the idea could be a good one. I found it pretty hard to read though. Might have been the color scheme, or that everything was too close together, or both.I also don't see the username of the person who submitted the story. This might not actually be important, but I did catch myself scanning for who submitted each story. In this case, it was to see if it was all one or two submitters (i.e., you guys), or if you already had a real community going.
|
thoughts?
| 3 | 17 |
2007-09-05 16:26:13 UTC
|
50,527 | 50,431 |
pistoriusp
|
We wanted it, so we built it...feedback?
|
rwebb
|
It might make it look more uniform, and less chaotic, if you move the voting, commenting and other elements that have static widths to the left side of the link.
|
thoughts?
| 8 | 17 |
2007-09-05 16:26:16 UTC
|
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