skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Cuban was motivated by a love of business.

Before Broadcast.com, he sold garbage bags as a kid, gave disco lessons to sororities in college, threw parties as a quasi event planner, started a computer company (MicroSolutions) and ran a hedge fund. After Broadcast.com, he bought the Mavs, started HD Net, formed a charity (Fallen Patriot Fund), actively invests as an angel and cofounded numerous movie production & distribution companies.
The machine that changed the world http://ei.cs.vt.edu/%7Ehistory/TMTCTW.html
This is an obsolete article.

Google voice search is available on the iPhone.

Google keyboard shortcuts are available through google labs after signing in.
Mm, consider what it would be like to not be forced to wait for a heart transplant. At that point, you could grow your own.

Of course, that would be quite controversial.
Looks like silly reddit-bait to me, and if you didn't take it seriously, why'd you post it? Who are the bozos who voted this up, anyway?:-)
Looks good in FF3.0.4/Linux, lines up perfectly all the way down the page. I have no zoom, and I have zoom-text-only turned off. Can't tell which font it is (as I'm not a typeface nerd), but I think I have all the ones listed in font-family installed. But using a background image for those lines could be considered anti-accessibility and anti-readability anyway.

Edit: the sample HTML file gets unaligned after the table, but I think that's because there are some 0.375em paddings scattered around in there (turning those off seem to shore it up nicely).
I don't have any moral objections [to the $700b bailout].

So you're fine with the government taking your money (i.e. your property) and giving it to someone outside of the government for no reason other than "they're a big company"?

I'm totally open-minded on this issue, so I'd love to hear a well-reasoned argument as to why it made sense for the government to have done that. As it stands, I feel that it is quite immortal to redistribute property unjustly.

I don't consider myself informed enough to have a strong opinion about the $700 billion one.

They're playing poker with your chips. Isn't it worthwhile to understand their tactics (or lack of tactics)?
2008 In Review - What Happened with Programming Languages?
It doesn't matter. Good advice stands on its own, and doesn't need its creator's name to help it along.
I'm not sure that "Start a Toyota" is a viable plan for most auto workers...
Nepal to get its first SEZ
Perhaps he'll be the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Baker of plumbing... :)
That's an interesting anecdote about business practices, but I don't understand what it has to do with the pro/con virtue/evil desirability/undesirability of being motivated by money.
A very nice story. I think, however, he overlooks the power of humanity in his story. It's not down to that $50 voucher. It's because he became a real person to the people he visited - a local guy, someone they'd seen in real life. It really seems all down to pressing the flesh. The other points don't make any logical sense, for example:

All these years I was right, most people let money motivate them and that creates poor decision making. I let the customer decide. The economy is tough so just give the customers what they want, money.

If it were really about him giving them "money" (a discount voucher isn't money, but we'll ignore that) and money creates poor decision making, then choosing him based on that offer is poor decision making.
while i applaud the general spirit of the blog post, cringely's examples don't exactly make sense.

on the one hand he is admits to signing up for 'spam' newsletters to keep a pulse (is this because it's useful or more obsessiveness?). but he also says that too much spam makes email not useful.

then he says that he will never sign up for third party apps on facebook. what about the pulse? what if they're useful?

i don't get what his personal experience is trying to say, but i do think clogging is an interesting phenomena. companies make a lot of crap and are often motivated by getting user attention and thus the bottom line, rather than truly helping users. then again, different users want different things. one man's newsletter is another man's spam.
I hope to not be "that guy" but wasn't this plumber's ultimate motivation money? I mean he was out of it and needed it. He was willing to work at a loss(or lower profit) so he could get business. He innovated and won. If he had had customers immediately then is he suggesting that his motivation would've been the love of money? Given his track record of honesty I would guess not.
Do better next year.
Eh. The thing with predictions is that all you have to do is have tons of people making predictions about every imaginable frightening, unlikely scenario and some of them will eventually wind up coming true. Predicting that a country in a recession will "collapse" is a pretty reasonable thing to do if you're in the business of making wild predictions no one is going to call you on if they turn out to be incorrect.
hm... so what this translates to is: Stop wasting time on HN?
Instead of having a ton like last year and failing, this year I'm just going to have one resolution:

- Waste less time
I voted you back up (to 1) because your comment is more insightful than then snarky 37signals bashing above.
Yes, the author seems to skim over the major difference between a Ponzi scheme, and Social Security - the government forces everyone to participate in Social Security, and can simply choose to reduce payouts (benefits) if things get too hard.

Also remember that Ponzi schemes work because people are greedy, and want to get rich quick - nobody gets rich from Social Security. This ties into the first point, because the need to make people rich fast means that a Ponzi scheme can't just simply reduce payouts without causing the whole pyramid to collapse.
Well there are economies of scale when you only have to maintain one standing army rather than 50 separate ones.
> I haven't seen any evidence that people here are somehow more sophisticated or something than people on reddit.

Many of us also have reddit accounts. What's really different is the culture:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People want this to be a civil, interesting, and mostly serious site about hacking and startups.
I don't know why... But I feel very bad for this guy. I think I would go insane if I was trapped inside a room for 100 days.

It's a great marketing ploy though.
Online Dating Services - Online Dating Advice and Dating Agency
Find a husband, find a wife, or find your Soulmate with the help of the Online Dating Coach. This dating agency serves clients worldwide and offers Professional Online Dating Services and Online Dating Advice to help you succeed at Internet Dating.
He picked the worst company to go with. They are a million times worse than Apple with their "closed-system" iPhone. As much as I want to feel sorry for the guy, it should have been his business to research if he would be accepted. I know if I were to sink a large amount of time into an iPhone app, I would make should it would get approved before starting all the work.
According to Dave McClure, they are going to pull in > $270M in revenue for 2008:

http://www.backtype.com/url/500hats.typepad.com/comment/1909...

Not sure how much they need to become profitable.
Worldofquotes attributes the quote to Theodore Hook, source: Bubbles of 1825, in "John Bull"

http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Theodore-Hook/1/index.ht...
Ship.
Of course, but my point is that the online shops have a much narrower range to work in. If a grocery store makes you walk around a quarter of a mile to get a ten-item list of necessities, people will accept it. If an online store makes you view half its inventory before you can purchase something, it's not going to make much business.
considering $180 is the cost after a subsidy by t-mobile, I don't think that's the case.
100 ways to increase your software sales in 2009
1680x1050
508 Mirrorboard for Linux (evdev/uinput)
my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out.

Is it really this way in the US? As a foreigner I'm curious.
> I think these days 'gay' is just used to mean 'lame'.

and that doesn't seem wrong?

'lame' is at worst light namecalling (and at best it is just funny jabbing; verbal teasing is a fine part of socializing).

on the other hand, if gays are always confronted with the lame stereotype it isn't exactly welcoming. it's easy to imagine group-think moving from self-aware funny stereotyping to habitual discrimination.

ditto for 'girls are whinier'. it's a funny comment, which I personally up-voted. ultimately, the whole context of joel's quote was comedic and not directed at a person.

writing this response has made me a little more thoughtful than goofy, so bear with this idea in the case of dealing directly with other people (eit):

trivializing someone else's concerns is kind of antisocial. most disagreements between people, from nerd flame wars to crimes against humanity, at heart stem from an inability to see someone else's perspective. do you really want to be that person?

the internet spreads information, but does it really help us connect with varied individuals and walk in other people's shoes? the least we can do is try.

(apologies for getting so off topic. eit)
Well, I'm thrifty. I'm not going to pay 150$ for something that Linux can do for me. It turns out, it's more difficult to do this than I thought would be.

~3 hours of hacking with C.
But starting a business that capitalizes on someone's (or some thing's) failures is.
What really struck me about that story is how one great idea executed well can make the difference between bankruptcy and roaring success. It's something that I've seen first hand, and probably the reason why being stubborn is so important. If you don't give up you'll eventually stumble into a strategy that works - after exhausting all possible alternatives. :)
Well, maybe, but Joel is "out" so he might take it personally.
The answer is not to be offended by any names. They're just words people...
Actually, you only need 2, one for each coast. The Founding Fathers did not approve of expeditionary warfare.
2 Ways to run Open Office apps from anywhere
$400 retail no?

And what if you already have a phone that you're perfectly happy with?
Use Drupal - it has several ecommerce modules, and you can plug in paypal, Google Checkout or Authorize.net shopping carts and be up-and-running in no time.
It seems odd that he can't simply find a distributor that already has a Nintendo license. Maybe Vivendi or Atari.
"and that doesn't seem wrong?"

Doesn't seem wrong to me, but I don't find words offensive. YMMV.
I'd delay the office as long as possible for almost all software-only shops. It's a PITA, a distraction, and an additional expense. Once you grow to a certain point and NEED the space, or if your home situation is too distraction-filled, then go get an office.

Too many people are hooked on the idea "if I can work in my PJs, it must not be a real job". If that describes your (or your family's) opinion and you can't change it, you might have to, but look at an office as a necessary evil, not an indicator or predictor of successfulness.

Edit: clarified that I meant renting real estate not just "the last" which could be employee or office.
I'm truly honored to have a whole post dedicated to me because a mistake on a list of 101 computer quotes. Someone has too much time on their hands.

Oh, and OF COURSE I was quoting Alan Kay.
OpenSocial Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby Libraries Released
Dell has a great Next Business Day warranty. It is worth to pay for it if it's not included with your Dell already.

My roommate spilled soup onto his Dell laptop. He immediately shut it down, tried to dry it up but the laptop didn't boot. So he called the support and on the next day a gentleman from Dell knocked on our door, replaced the motherboard and voila, the laptop was as good as new. It was interesting just to look at the man from Dell how skillfully he disassembled and reassembled the laptop.

One other friend exploits this package. When he thinks he should have a new MB or CPU or anything, he just calls them and tells it "squeaks". Next day, a man comes and replaces anything with a new piece. No questions asked.

And this package is valid throughout the world, no matter where you are. Dell rocks.
Just get a mac mini.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=403013
Network card on my MacBook refused to work just after 6 months. On the other hand, my 4 year old Asus laptop still works as a charm, apart from the HDD failure. Still, the HDD went on 3,5 years of heavy and tough usage.
"Apple treated me right when my machine fails"

Your experience differs from mine :) I've always used PCs because they were cheap and I needed them for work, but last year I was working as a consultant (so integration wasn't such a big deal) and there was a tempting offer on MacBooks. I got one, I loved it.

After about a year, the bit of the case where you rest your palms started to crack. The intarwebs told me this was a known problem, and should be covered by warranty. I contacted on Apple service centre, to be told "no problem, just drop it in and we'll fix it." Of course, it would take two weeks, and there was no way to expedite things.

So I tried another Apple retailer, and was told to bring it in that afternoon. "Great," I thought, "this is why you pay a bit more for a Mac - service!" Unfortunately, when I got there they said the same thing - two weeks, no exceptions. After about 40 minutes of arguing and cajoling, the Genius agreed to do it there and then. Although I was pleased about this, it would have been better if they could have done it without the arguments.

I just bought a new Toshiba and passed the MacBook on to my daughter (she's a real Mac fanatic). The new PC is great, I'm surprised that I actually like Windows Vista, and it only cost UKP400. So if it goes wrong I could easily buy a replacement. I might even buy a Netbook with the cash I didn't spend getting another Mac.
In the poker communities I've played with (and I'm by no means an expert), folding before putting any money in the pot would not be considered "playing" a hand (especially if you didn't pay a blind -- but even if you did).
Discount Bedroom Furniture From Southern Textiles
The Southern Textiles Elite Collection offers a huge range of sheets, blankets and comforter covers at prices you won't believe. This is hand made quality and construction for less than you ever imagined.
Crazy to think that in 1986 Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were already considered to have triumphed. In hindsight, they had only just taken their first few baby steps in business!
I finished one of my conference sessions (with about 150 people) with "Kumbaya, motherfuckers!" and nobody complained.
If it were really about him giving them "money" ... and money creates poor decision making, then choosing him based on that offer is poor decision making.

Yes, but it is well-known that customers make illogical decisions. Recognising that a user interface that's strictly logical may, for illogical reasons, be less usable than one that panders to the user's "irrationality" is a good business decision. Basing your business decisions around the recognition that people make apparently random choices is a Good Thing(tm).

You say that the humanity has been overlooked, but choosing someone because you've looked them in the eye and pressed the flesh is less logical than choosing someone based on their references and an objective evaluation of their work.

Any business that overlooks the human factor, including customers' potentially irrational/illogical decision making processes, does so at its peril.
Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior
It's common as dirt.

You quote Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, and other Grecoroman philosophers all the time, and you don't even know it. Not to mention Shakespeare, Aesop, and even modern day people. (Inspiration vs perspiration, for example.) Many "sayings" have origins with a specific person who said or wrote it, in a documented fashion, even though they've slipped into common culture. Even new words, like "OK" and "bloodstained."

If people really want to bitch about David that much, there are much, much better grounds they can find than this.
I understand what you're saying Mark and I agree. I think waitress was an unfortunate example, though. Maybe I can offer a different perspective of what you're saying:

There's a 'pyramid of necessity' with "materials production" at the bottom, and at the top things like branding and marketing. In an expanding economy, such as we've had for the last 60 years, the top adds all the value (so, for example, you can just outsource the bottom). Generic bleach is often overstock from Clorox. Same product, but you're paying more for the name, image, etc. Service and finance industries fall in toward the top of the pyramid.

In a contracting economy, as we have now, the pointer on the pyramid drops relative to the size of the downturn. If it's severe, it's really only material production / commodities / etc. that matters. Who cares if it's a Nike? I need a shoe.

So it's not about "real value" meaning no value, but rather "real" vs. "nominal" value. The bottom of the pyramid has concrete value whereas the top has merely the nominal value of what people are currently willing to pay for it.
Local Keyword Placeholder
Investingqa.com is proposed to teach and inform people about opportunities accessible within the Global Opportunity Community (GOC).
Buying Viagra Online and Shipping Issues
Today if not all, most of us prefer to do our shopping online because we can save a lot of time and money when we shop online. However, it is not to say that there aren’t any disadvantages in buying our generic Viagra or generic Cialis online. There are disadvantages such as security issues, credit card scams etc. Therefore, it is important to pick your online store with care. Even the most reputed online stores at times fail in one of the crucial aspects of their service, which is shipping.
Galatta Cinema - South Indian Movie Magazine, Tamil Movie Magazine
Galatta Cinema is a South Indian Movie Magazine portal which gives details about Indian cinema magazine, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada movie reviews, Tamil Actors, Telugu Actors, Kannada Actors, Malayalam Actors, Photo Gallery, Actress Pictures, Movie reviews.
> It's a great marketing ploy though.

Just like online petitions...right?

The sad news is Nintendo probably doesn't care even about the public backlash stemming from this 100 day protest. Actually, what backlash? A lot of the criticism I've read on neogaf, kotaku, joystiq and others is criticism of the game and the developer, and not much of Nintendo's actions, especially from people who seem to know something of the whole process.

I personally think he should invest a big chunk of time into Android and iPhone ports of the game, as well as XBLM and maybe even a regular ol' PC version. I can't speak for Nintendo, but I'd take impressive iPhone app store sales over the dev locking himself in for 100 days any day. And he's spent so much time on the game that it seems a waste not to port to other platforms anyway with all that publicity and effort and with Nintendo ignoring him. Imagine what kind of sales World of Goo would get if/when they release an iPhone port.

Don't get me wrong, I think what he's done is impressive for a one-person job, but he's not doing such a great job selling himself or looking into alternatives earlier.
Agreed, it's the "look them in the eye, shake their hand, and tell them you want to earn their business" part that really gets them.

The $50 voucher is the thing that gives the future customer "permission" to follow up on their gut feeling of "Wow, I like being treated like a HUMAN BEING."
http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/theory-disproven-mon...

I wonder how he found your blog.
I found the article in question, Bubbles of 1825, and it's definitely not from there. Too bad:

http://www.archive.org/stream/choicehumorouswo00hook/choiceh...
Yeah, I wish I had one of those phones... they're pretty nice, and I'd love to play with Hecl on a real phone.
Still, those kind of "tricks" are great to teach schoolchildren, IF it gets them interested in mathematics.

For example, it is actually not that hard (just takes practice/time like everything else) to multiply random 3 or 4 digit numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachtenberg_system (great story behind it, as well)
Of course, because they're groups of boys. Duh.
The big problem with iPhone apps is that there is no way to get initial preapproval before starting work, and where Apple defines what is acceptable for the app store is fairly vague and not consistent. There've been plenty of cases even mentioned here on HN of developers who spent x amount of money and y amount of time on an app that was rejected or ignored by Apple.

I'm not sure why Apple doesn't do it. It's not like anyone's asking them to approve apps for the store at the idea stage...I think most devs would be satisfied with getting conditional approval for their ideas, subject to additional reviews (i.e. implementation) before it is approved for the app store. If Apple wants to charge more, so be it, at least it would remove the uncertainty of clients not sure if their app would be approved and developers wary of wasting their time.

I would definitely find that useful, as I'm sitting on one half baked iPhone app and idea that, depending on how you interpret the iPhone dev agreements, may or may not be offensive in nature. I don't want to continue spending the dev time if Apple decides it's too offensive, but it would be pure agony if I found out someone else had the same idea and was approved.
Programming: Love It or Leave It
Excellent point. This dynamic has also led to doomsday sayers such as Peter Schiff being heralded as the genius that saw what noone else saw, when in reality he might just have been lucky. There are probably 100 Peter Schiff's out there whose predictions didn't hold up, and who we subsequently don't herald as heroes.
No other industry?

Anything where the business owner can create intangible products himself/herself (e.g. writing, design, wedding planning, whatever) has just as low starting capital required.
Maybe in some situations, but it would be a shitty situation as a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on. Some epithet towards the wife is probably appropriate.
Don't suppose being born into a family with self-created wealth (lawyer father, board member mother, bank president grandaddy) had anything to do with developing the business acumen required to make money from "hacking."

Anyway, we all know it was the exclusivity agreements Microsoft managed that made them rich, not the quality of their hackerdom.
I plan to

1. Be able to jog for 10 kilometers

2. Make a video that reaches 500.000 views on YouTube

3. Release at least one more app that brings in $2000 or more a month

Modest goals are easier to reach, and a goal that cannot be measured is no goal.
Where are you from? I think it is like that for a lot of people in most of the world
UK to get Japan’s famous bullet trains
For starters, all school children.
> Just like online petitions...right?
This seems better than that. It will surely make it's mark.

Well, he's anyway found out a new kind of protest 'online protest'. Better than online petitions. And it's close to live protest :)

Your point to invest in Anrdoid apps, I agree. He should just go abt developing an Android port of the game. Google would anyway soon open up a payment system for the android market place and now since the android market place has very few apps, he surely has the advantage of getting noticed there.

I would like to know the result of this protest once it ends.

P.S: As a sign of good will, we all hackers should click that blue "let Nintendo know" link and mail Nintendo about it. My mail contents included the url to the website and "We want to play Bob's Game"