0 points by davidw 6 hours ago | link | parent The "externalities" (CO2, traffic) are less extreme - at least on a per-unit basis, than threatening someone, or actually shooting them. We have the means, if not the will to make some attempts at calculating and taxing them. I wonder what those sorts of calculations would look like if you calculated a value for each person killed by guns in a given year and spread that out over their sales in a tax of some kind. Hrm. Anyway, yeah, cars are useful, guns I can and do live without.
2 points by Zak 5 hours ago | link Your comparison is invalid because you're comparing externalities from legal use of cars to externalities from illegal use of guns. Compare the externalities of legal use of cars (pollution, traffic, some crashes) to legal use of guns (pollution from lead and propellants, some accidental shootings) and illegal use of cars (crashes due to DUI, reckless driving, racing) to illegal use of guns (assault, murder).
1 point by rokhayakebe 2 hours ago | link Thats what I heard. I do not think it would bother me much. I can stay in for the day and only go out at night.
1 point by davidw 8 hours ago | link | parent Here's my current list of things I have going on. I know there are too many of them, but it's hard to get rid of things... What do you guys think?
- Hecl - scripting language for J2ME, mobile phones. I think this is the coolest thing I've done in some ways, but one of the least likely to be profitable (no one makes money selling languages).
- Linux Incompatibility List - leenooks.com - a list of hardware that doesn't work with Linux.
- LinuxSi.com - List of stores in Italy that sell computers with Linux, or at least without Windows.
- Rivet - http://tcl.apache.org/rivet - this one's mostly on the way out in terms of my involvement, but I still have some obbligations.
- ShopList - http://shoplist.dedasys.com - a shopping list app for mobile phones that some people seem to like a lot, because it's done right (data entry is via the web, not the phone).
- Squeezed Books - startup idea that's basically as far as I'm going to take it without an uptick in interest.
- Stuff to Do - a time tracker/todo list that's now open source. Not really going anywhere at this point.
- Tcl book - book on the Tcl programming language that's in its advanced stages. I'm really torn about this one - Tcl isn't going anywhere, but publishing a book would be cool.
3 points by davidw 12 hours ago | link | parent Hard work will get you to a certain point - look at doctors, laywers, people like that. They work hard, and they take home pretty good pay. They're never going to get youtube or skype amounts of money though.
I think the startup world is more random, though, and hard work only gets you in a position to take advantage of opportunities, as someone mentioned elsewhere regarding "The Black Swan".
2 points by davidw 15 hours ago | link | parent The last time I was in that area, we lived in Hayward, because my wife was doing an internship at a biotech company, and we only had one car, so she rode her bike. One thing that always made us laugh was the bank downtown with the cornerstone that had a date on it like 1978. Coming from Italy, where you regularly walk by buildings that are 100-200-500... a few nearly a thousand years old, it's kind of silly.
We were bored to tears in Hayward in terms of having a social life, and usually drove up to Berkeley.
3 points by davidw 15 hours ago | link | parent They're not going to look on the idea favorably, and you risk pissing this guy off by telling him his code sucks.
I have basically sworn off PHP-using companies, because this is nearly always what you find. It works, but it's a horrid mess that they expect you to develop with rapidly, when all you want to do is take it outside and burn it.
1 point by davidw 2 days ago | link | parent More, hopefully. I don't think you can actually be productive if you're a complete zombie for extended periods of time.
1 point by davidw 2 days ago | link | parent Sounds handy, but I'm still having trouble caring all that much. What's something actually interesting that people do with it?
1 point by bct 2 days ago | link Google's GData API is based on it. Word supposedly has an AtomPub client, so you can publish right from your word processor. It's the next step in reinventing USENET. Et cetera.
The tech isn't particularly exciting, but it provides a way to unite what are now totally different APIs.
1 point by davidw 3 days ago | link | parent I really get the impression, from reading this site, reading PG, listening to the interview with Jessica, that they are much happier if you have a co founder that you've known for a while, so just finding someone to plug into that role isn't as likely to work, even if they're good.
Maybe I'm wrong though, because my mind reading abilities leave a lot to be desired.
1 point by DaniFong 3 days ago | link That would be my choice as well. It's just really fairly to get someone to join in a cofounder capacity, because the people I know well are all on the east coast or Canada, and I have a lot of pull them away from.
I've had a lot of people willing to work part time. It's just all of the people who are likely to be interested in my project are also likely to be very, very busy -- part time is all I think I can get in the short term.
On the other hand, in the design stages many companies (Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, for example) had only one person working on things. Turning it into a business before a prototype emerges might be premature.
2 points by DaniFong 2 days ago | link Woz did the Cream Soda Computer, and the Apple I and II on his own (though he had Job's support after Apple I). Bill did BASIC for the Altair on his own, and Yahoo was just David's list, to start.
There's a distinction between the seed stage and the regular early stage that I'm trying to point to.
3 points by davidw 3 days ago | link | parent Sounds like a "focus" issue - they're not going to want you to be dividing your attention, especially not with something they're not involved in.
1 point by davidw 3 days ago | link | parent Where's home? Working under the table is a horrible way of doing a startup, because you have no legal grounds to go on, and certainly can't do equity that way.
Sounds a lot like Italy, where the high price of doing business forces things underground, thus giving people no legal redress should they have problems. Yuck.
2 points by davidw 3 days ago | link | parent The people jumping around in the logo look like they're desperately trying to attract the attention of a search and rescue team.
1 point by davidw 3 days ago | link | parent Smart way of thinking about it, that gets to the heart of the question, rather than repeating the trite 'worth nothing', which is obviously going to piss off the idea guy, and create problems.
2 points by davidw 5 days ago | link | parent Commodore PET and Commodore 64. I don't remember exactly why I wanted to program them... just that it was fun.
6 points by davidw 6 days ago | link | parent It may rain more in other places - I'd bet that it rains more in Padova, Italy, than my own Northwest hometown of Eugene, Oregon - but the important thing is that it is gray in the NW. Often. It may rain a bunch in a day somewhere else, but in the NW, it will drizzle for a week.
3 points by gibsonf1 5 days ago | link For the one winter I lived in Seattle, we went for 4 months straight without sunshine. When a ray of light fell outside our office on the parking lot, we all ran out to revel in that one ray - I'll never forget how desperately we all missed and needed the sunlight.
2 points by davidw 6 days ago | link | parent I'll take a stab at this. I recently read one of Milton Friedman's books, and I liked it a lot. His pursuit of freedom is admirable, and something that I can understand. He even suggests that freedom is more important than using government power to attempt to stop racism, for instance by letting people choose not to hire black people (as an example).
That got me to thinking though. While I'm attracted to the sentiment of freedom above all else, what I think is missing in his equation is that communities tend to be sort of self-reinforcing. It would be very difficult, if it were accepted by others to not hire black people, to be the first one to do so. Now, laws against that kind of discrimination don't change the way people feel, nor make their racist sentiments go away overnight. However, they do drive those thoughts underground, and break the cycle of "we've always done it that way" by making it no longer acceptable. And with time, that improves the climate and makes it easier for attitudes to change.
At least that's one thought that came to mind. I really admire Friedman's purity of thought, but think that perhaps it's a bit naive. It would certainly be an interesting subject to discuss in person with a person of that libertarian mindset.
1 point by dfranke 4 days ago | link I'm such a person. I haven't read Friedman, but I'll be happy to ramble on about Rothbard for as long you'd like :-)
1 point by stuki 6 days ago | link Just imagine the level of job candidates you could be selecting amongst if you were the only one hiring from a population as big as the black community. In any competitive field, employers are fairly limited in how 'racist' they can be in their hiring practices without setting themselves up for a fall.
1 point by davidw 6 days ago | link Sure, but there are a lot of fields that aren't really that competitive (where you simply hire cheap laborers who basically work about the same), and where the pressure to conform may be higher than the pressure to find an employee that is 2% better than the next guy.
1 point by stuki 4 days ago | link Even then, widespread aversion to hiring from one of two equally productive groups creates a big incentive to break the mold. And that incentive will only keep increasing as long as no one steps out. In the limit case, you pretty much have access to an 'unlimited' pool of free labor. This line of reasoning does presuppose a reasonably free country, though.
1 point by davidw 7 days ago | link | parent > Acquirers will also have to get better at picking winners.
Hrm... one of the things that makes markets work so well is that it brings "the wisdom of crowds" to bear, and doesn't require small, homogeneous groups to attempt to pick winners. So something about that section raises a flag in my head - if there are more startups in the future, maybe more of them will have to go it alone, instead of this "easy out" of being bought?
