blurry

Actually, a couple years ago PDF got ISO-approved as an open standard format so PDF=Adobe is no longer true.

(I believe MS tried to muscle in on the PDF market with their own standard so Adobe was kind of forced into acting quick).

They might still make money on the Writer software but it's become quite competitive so I doubt it's a big source of revenue.

Quite different: Wufoo makes html forms, Doculicious makes PDFs.

A lot of applications (government-type orgs, class-action lawsuits, etc) require PDFs and signed paper forms.

Dropbox is only free for 2GB, not much if you want to back up photos.

There is an excellent collection of short videos/talks by Elon Musk at Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner:

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=385&...

Quick pg, register hackerer.com!

Now that's just plain rude. What makes you say that I made up my story? If you feel that your position is strong, why do you need to attack me personally? Talk about quality of the argument...

Nothing is as dangerous as half truths so let's look at what really happened as far your example of female leadership in Muslim countries.

Yes, at first glance 3 of the 4 countries in your example (Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh) have "elected" a female as president/prime minister. However, without exception these women were the daughters or widows of the previous heads of state. Their appointments represent the feudal tradition of inheriting power by family relation rather than popular vote as you are implying.

The 4th country, India, is an even worse example. Not only muslims are a minority in India (a quick lookup tells me between 15% and 20%), prior to the elections the muslim-indian leadership demanded that the female candidate be disqualified because she made some sort of a statement against veils.

Ugh. Proponents of status quo always invoke tradition and use some attractively pastoral but highly marginal examples to paint a white-washed picture that's quite far from reality.

In reality, it's not about the clothes. Muslim men base forcing women to cover up on "hard" facts of exactly the "sun orbits the earth" variety. If you did not think western, you would know that these men think of women as being both naturally disabled (mentally and physically) and inferior in the eyes of Allah (intellectually and morally). This goes far beyond mere decorum and is not at all comparable to office wear vs. bikinis.

Case in point, a few years back I spent a month at an all-women resort in one of the more liberal muslim countries. Once, I happened to swim in front of a local man. To say that he was stunned would be an understatement. His eyes bugged out, he lost his breath, and when he finally managed to speak, he was stuttering. Turns out he quite literally thought that women are physically unable to swim. It was as though he witnessed pigs fly.

What I am saying is, it's easy to take the cultural relativism position until you consider where it leads. As just one example, this is what happens in Saudi Arabia today during rape hearings. A man's testimony is considered fact unless proven otherwise, similar to Western law. A woman's testimony however is considered a presumption, based on these "facts" as loosely quoted from actual Saudi law: women are emotional and as such incapable of sound judgement, women do not participate in public life and as such incapable of understanding what they merely observe, women are forgetful and as such their words are unreliable, and finally, men are by God's will superior and therefore dominate women by default.

So what do you think happens to rape victims when you frame it in those "cultural" terms? By the way, if you think you know where I am going with this, you are wrong - rape victims get sent to jail for the crime of being in the company of a male non-relative in the first place. When you get down to actual lives of actual people, it's not quite as conveniently multi-culti anymore, is it?

So let's not be careful of what we are criticizing. When a tradition is practiced by a whole people, it's cultural norm. When it's forced on a minority that's unable to defend itself - even if said minority has been slowly beaten or acculturated into docile agreement - it's perfectly ok to say it's asinine and just plain wrong.

I've experienced a bit of muslim culture first-hand and it's not even close to the cutesy image you get from this article. The author sees herself as a culturally sensitive critical thinker ("before you think I drank the koolaid...") but she is far from it. Take her cliched argument about the advantages of abbaya. If completely covering one's face and body is so desirable, why are women, and only women, forced into it under the threat of extreme corporal punishment and imprisonment? And how could she miss the fact that not speaking unless spoken to and making sure to always look down (to name just a couple things) is an integral part of wearing the garment?

Gender apartheid is just as cruel and ugly as race apartheid. Extolling the virtues of full body cover for women is quite like saying that working cotton fields is really good for blacks, what with all that fresh air and exercise. Ignorant at best.

Second above, plus - you are a web developer coding in RoR, you've studied comp sci, you went to a prestigious college and have numerous connections to venture capital, yet you are looking for a more solid CTO? Something just doesn't compute :)

Am I the only one who's read the original issue as not the problem with extracurricular activities per say, but the fact that the employee now wants to sell one of those apps?

The employer said:

One of my employees is always working in small applications for his family or just for the fun of it. Now he wants to start selling one of those applications.

... and

I think that anyone can do what he wishes with his own time. But obviously, there are a lot of issues involved.

The way I read it, he's known about the side projects for a while and never had a problem with them. He is having second thoughts only because he's learned that the coder wants to make money off one of those projects...

I think that what's really happening here is the employer having a personal bias of the money-is-dirty variety. Obviously, anyone is welcome to whatever moral attitudes they like, but to force them onto your employees is completely inappropriate.

I use istockphoto.com. It's not free but at $1 per image who cares. The images are all tagged so the search works really well.

I once had a startup which was basically an online database of professional actor and model videos. My all time favorite put-down came when we first got into model videos.

We did some test shoots for a couple established agencies (Elite, Q Models) and were looking to get into more doors. My partner's girlfriend at the time was a model so I asked her to get us a meeting with her bookers. Her [strong] opinion was that for a variety of seemingly good reasons (too long to list here) web video would never work in the modeling industry and we were pretty much wasting our time.

Five minutes later, on a completely unrelated topic, she mentioned that her best friend, also a model, was going on a video shoot that week. Turned out her agency (Wilhelmina) thought this new online video thing was, ya know, promising.

I am still scratching my head over that one. She wasn't your stereotypical 18-year old airhead and she was clearly sympathetic to our cause...

Oh, it's more than a weekend :)

It's low on the usual puffery so don't skim or you'll miss awesome gems like the 2006 Human Security Project report about 40% decline(!) in armed conflict in the last decade.

From HN guildelines:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.

From Edge 2007:

GOT OPTIMISM? THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS SEE GOOD NEWS AHEAD

While conventional wisdom tells us that things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the science-minded among us see good news in the coming years. That's the bottom line of an outburst of high-powered optimism gathered from the world-class scientists and thinkers who frequent the pages of Edge, in an ongoing conversation among third culture thinkers.

http://www.edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html

glassdoor.com has pretty good info

At the end of the article, it was stated that tryptophan in foods does not go to your brain because of other substances competing (and taking priority) for transport resources.

I don't understand how this affects the system. If the vaccine fails and you need urgent care, you are covered because you did get vaccinated, right? What am I missing?

There is an interesting proposal out there related to organ donation which could be adopted for this type of situation.

The proposal is to separate people into two groups: those who agree to donate their organs, and those who decline. Later on, when people happen to need organ transplants, they receive them according to their group priority, i.e. if you decline to donate, you turn comes up only after everyone in the first group received their organs.

I think that is a fair system, and could be applied in this case also. If you choose to vaccinate, you are covered, and if you do not, you pay out of pocket.

It really is fascinating how people's likes and dislikes color their perception. We look at the same video and you see screaming while I see a regular townhall meeting-type Q&A. I am not being argumentative here, I just really fail to see the screaming - he looks to be speaking loudly both before and after that question.

One thing I will say is that it's unfair to allow senior citizens to ask questions, but then say that Obama is scaring them when he answers. I doubt the specific lady in question would want to be treated differently than others just based on her age. If she thinks herself fit to attend a political debate, we should respect her decision.

Also, I am not sure why you presumed that I am being fed by the left wing media. Like I said, I watched the actual candidates' debates... so I really just saw them however they chose to present themselves.

Well, one thing I do know is that SCORE volunteers are mostly retirees. That of course doesn't mean much in and of itself but there were several people at adjoining desks and they all had similar experience... more of a small-talk type thing.

If anything I would presume New York would be a little higher on energy and a little lower on chitchat compared to other places, so if that's the vibe here...

I think you may be looking at this too broadly/theoretically though. Just break it down to what your needs are at the moment (what kind of company to form, how to write a business plan, etc) and go from there. If you post specific questions, you will probably find better advice here than at SCORE.

I am surprised you would say that. From what I've seen (I've followed him and other candidates a lot during the debates) he showed extreme self control, more so than any other candidate.

I tend to agree with the New York Times:

In the way Mr. Obama has trained himself for competition, he can sometimes seem as much athlete as politician. Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger: to do so would be an indulgence, a distraction from his goals. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses.

What were some examples of those numerous occasions where he's lost his temper?

That explains why Obama is so skinny.

I've visited SCORE in New York a few years ago... didn't find them too useful. They did not offer much beyond vague common sense advice, even on those issues where they could have easily been more prepared and specific (incorporating vs. LLC, finding a good accountant, health insurance, etc).

It was kind of like visiting a retirement home and talking to some nice folks, pleasant but nothing more.

Individually wrapped sunscreen wipes are already in most pharmacies.

Back in college. My point exactly.

Grad school. My point exactly.

Couldn't agree with you more. Not what the discussion was about though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

So, you obviously know how to use the computer but you would choose hard labor for $15/hour when you can easily at the very worst temp for $20/hour sitting in a comfortable chair?

Why?