charleso

Your cat might have a bladder or kidney stone which is causing extreme pain when pooping. Please take your cat to the vet and have that checked out.

I ran into the same thing: Cat pooped in exotic, awkward places, but never the litter box. Never looked like she was in pain -- just being stubborn, I figured. Turned out to be a bladder stone brought on by the ingredients in modern cat food (put in place to help other feline health issues, but which causes stones in a small subset of cats). After the stones were cleared up, all litter box issues disappeared.

Do you bike faster than you can run?

Would you run, as fast as you can, head-first into a concrete wall?

No, it does not make sense to bike without a helmet.

He also had a regularly updated blog at:

http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/

There are many 'back in the day' stories archived there. It's bothering me quite a bit that his latest "To be continued" won't.

Reminds me of The Phantom video game console from around a decade ago. That one also promised the universe, with PA declaring their skepticism back in 2003: http://penny-arcade.com/2003/01/22 http://www.penny-arcade.com/2003/08/20/ (the links to the product no longer reference that device -- it never appeared)

There's nothing wrong with civilly expressing skepticism about overly-ambitious claims. This article seems to do a good job of doing just that.

"Well, everything worked fine until you installed that [Chrome | Firefox | Opera] thing on my computer."

Doing free tech support for non-technical people is a wonderful thought, but it can also provide a harsh lesson in the dangers of unlimited liability for open-ended, no-fee, no-contract work.

It's a clever gag, but titles like this will unfortunately show up in future HN searches.

Would it be appropriate to adopt an April 1st etiquette of some sort? Say, an [April Fools] tag in the title?

I was curious what the author had gotten up to since that piece was written 20-odd years ago. This appears to be the gent:

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

Flashtastic personal site, here:

http://michaelventura.org/

  >...a large number of little hurdles add up to a big hurdle. Maybe not for them,
  >developers who have already committed to this platform and have a stake in it

A quick perusal of the BlackBerry developer forums will show how much this nonsense matters to individuals who have already developed their applications and have a large stake in the platform. Yes, getting started with BlackBerry is a pain, but the minor errors continue to compound the longer you develop for the devices. This adds up to an impression of institutional incompetence and leaves one considering whether time spent developing for a BlackBerry device is a waste of effort.

It's not as though any of these issues are a surprise to RIM. Just running a search on their own forums will show the same topics appearing over and over again through the years as developers find themselves bitten by bureaucratic quirks, frustrating quests for direct internet access, or surprises due to poor App World implementation.

No, these problems cannot be corrected overnight, but one would think they would be addressed in some manner. This thread alone gives an example of how RIM's developer-oriented initiatives seem to completely miss the mark:

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/New-...

Android and iPhone have shown the value small and mid-sized developers bring to a platform through quality applications, but RIM remains completely out to lunch on developer support. It's gotten so bad that RIM has had to offer a free PlayBook just to get developers to bother with the device, and now there's talk of providing Android app compatibility on PlayBook's release to make up for the lack of professional BlackBerry developers addressing the tablet:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-busine...

Seriously RIM? Why should I go through the pain of developing a BlackBerry app when spending the same effort developing for Android will give me access to both Android and RIM devices?

Should I just abandon the platform now and focus 100% on Android?

Active reader here, but I avoid commenting.

Whenever I do, I seem to find myself caring too much about the responses. This leads me to returning again and again to a thread I've already learned from and replying to responses in an attempt to clarify my position. Before I know it, a half-hour has passed to no benefit.

Since arrows tend to be clicked to reflect a worldview which conforms to a reader's own and not to promote posts of substance, I find the result is more poking a hive-mind than learning through discussion. That agitates me far more than it should and, for myself, it's best by far to simply lurk.

"At that time" Microsoft ruled everything except for the browser. The public internet was emerging as a surprisingly powerful force against the desktop and the argument before the courts was that the browser WAS part of the core operating system and could not be removed.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft :

Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free.

It doesn't look like much now, but installing IE as the default browser on Mac was a pretty big deal at the time. Microsoft won the 'browser wars' due to this and other key moves.

Today, the 'wars' are in the handheld o/s and default search engines. Microsoft is again making shrewd moves in those battles and their partners are far from guaranteed to die as a result of their alliances.

Somehow, despite their Microsoft partnership, Apple managed to do a bit better than simply scrape by. I'm sure Nokia will see a similar recovery over the next few years.

But Apple did make Microsoft Internet Explorer the default browser on the Mac, which was Microsoft's battlefield at the time.

How much in the minority am I for thinking this is a good plan for Nokia?

Echoing my post in another thread, Apple received $150 million in financing from Microsoft back in 1997 in exchange for including IE on the Mac (among other partnership goodies).

If you don't recall that period of computer history (when Apple almost went bust), you may want to watch this Steve Jobs Macworld 1997 presentation discussing their joint venture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY

"Kneeling before Zod" didn't turn out too badly for Apple.

All of this 'Nokia is doomed because of their Microsoft partnership' talk reminds me of when Apple announced something similar back in 1997. Anyone remember this Steve Jobs talk from when Apple was on the financial ropes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY

If you think Nokia is doomed, you might want to re-watch that video. Things didn't turn out quite so bad for Apple.

Could you synchronize two Kinect devices on one clock and then toggle the display/capture of that grid every odd or even 10ms span? So, only one grid is displayed and processed during its 'slice' of time, with the grids strobing rather than continuously projected.

Software-only, or would that result in too jerky of a motion capture?

Keep in mind that recruiters "get people for jobs, not jobs for people".

You, as a potential employee, are not their customer -- you're the commodity being sold. It doesn't change the way you feel about how you are treated, but awareness of that relationship may help keep your patience and a level head.

(Quote taken from this "What about your job do you wish other people understood?" Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e1dsi/what_about_... )

To add to the sound GTFO advice posted already: When you do get a new job (and you should), make sure you're on the revenue side of the business rather than contributing to the company's costs.

Apart from the outsourcing you've done, your work is viewed by your employer as an expense rather than adding to the bottom line. When it comes time to cut the budget, you'll likely be lumped in with the 'fat' which can be removed without much pain.

Conversely, if you find a job where you are part of the engine bringing in revenue (whether as a consultant or a product developer), you will generally be treated much better and have more opportunities for advancement.

Don't forget to ask about the copy-and-paste glue pot and brush (or artist's oblong wooden paint palette) while you're at it.

It's pretty common for the original meaning of symbols to disappear into the mists of time. Using a floppy for 'save' seems like a good one to add to humanity's set of 21st Century pictographs.

Does this mean the end of the DejaNews Usenet archive as well? The transformation of that unbelievably helpful resource into "Google Groups" was a crime.

Geez, but I miss Usenet. Having _one_ forum on which everything related to a topic was posted was unbelievably helpful.

Aren't you significantly more efficient than the travel agents of the 80s?

So, your single-person living has removed the need for 10 or 20 (or 50?) travel agency folks of a previous non-Internet 'must visit that travel agent around the corner to get my trivial purchase Thanksgiving tickets' world.

I really hope the fellow behind Dwarf Fortress sees this success and starts charging a small amount for his releases.

I think the following DF has (despite its rough state) would provide impressive revenue and allow him to bring on employees to help build his game while earning him a comfortable living.

Because Hugh would be denying the café revenue if he occupied the table without a purchase or 'nursed' a coffee for an unreasonably long period of time.

Each table needs to earn $n each hour to keep the place in business. If you enjoy your neighbourhood café, you should do your part to add to that revenue as much as possible while you enjoy their services.

Yes, I did read the article. Then I re-read it before commenting since I found the advice in that section to be so surprisingly bad.

I did not make up my quoted comments. I pulled them right from the posted article and used them in context.

Right under "Point #2: After Your Product Launch", the author states:

"Customers make it necessary to put processes in place for marketing, sales, support, and back-end admin tasks. Any ongoing work that can be described in a written process can be outsourced to a VA and save incredible amounts of time for the founders.

"If you do not outsource these tasks, they will get in the way of work that's truly productive for your business."

The author is stating that a startup should outsource their support and I still think that outsourcing customer support for a new product is an extremely bad idea, no matter how easily that support process can be documented.

Feedback from customer support is one of the best ways for a business to identify where a product can be improved. Yes, you can easily describe support in a written process, but you cannot possibly anticipate what customers will tell you during those support calls.

The information shared during those early support calls is absolute gold.

I think his advice on outsourcing marketing, sales and support to an off-shore virtual personal assistant is profoundly dangerous.

When you've just launched, you have no idea what parts of your product are truly helpful to your customers and which have been a waste of time to build. Before my company launched I was completely off-base as to what we should be directing attention to, and it was only through talking with early customers that we identified where the focus of effort should be directed.

That direction wasn't obvious, either. It was only through speaking with many customers over many weeks that a vague idea of what just might be the best thing to focus upon emerged.

The author states that: "If you do not outsource these tasks, they will get in the way of work that's truly productive for your business.". However, without talking directly with customers, you are unlikely to know which activities are 'truly productive for your business'.

Outsource support at your peril.

Why not implement the keygen using public key cryptography? Wouldn't that eliminate the possibility of a reverse-engineered keygen right off?

RankChecker is still showing me different site positions in the Yahoo and Bing search results.

Shouldn't keyword rankings be identical if Bing is powering both?

As another former Canada / U.S. transplant I agree there is a difference, but it's less extreme. It's almost intra-national, really.

The 'culture shock' between Toronto, Ontario -> Montgomery, Alabama won't be much different than if you were moving from Los Angeles instead. In contrast, the culture difference between Toronto, Canada -> Cairo, Egypt or Bangkok, Thailand will be pretty danged huge.

So the 'successful business' which sprang from nowhere over the past year doesn't actually exist? The whole 'relocate to China to save a few bucks' craziness didn't really happen?

That would explain a lot, as this emerging story reads more like a fictional dot.com tale.

Edit: Thanks PRS. I won't be wasting time with 'Max Klein' posts in the future.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Your company is young and your period of profitability is relatively short-lived to date. It seems unwise to have taken a business which appeared to be working well and overhauling it completely to (possibly) reduce costs which did not need to be reduced.

Do you have a 'plan-b' to allow you to quickly revert your company to its previous state if things do not go as planned?

Here's another tip for sharpening disposable razor blades using a pair of jeans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Kxiom83Js

Basically, you're using the denim as a strop to rub off the debris which accumulates on the blade (which appears to be responsible for most of the dulling effect). The blades themselves remain sharp for ages.

I've been doing this for a while and now use each regular Mach 3 blade for 3-4 months of daily use.

You've described the core of the problem: Everyone feels entitled to their entitlements, but nobody in the U.S. seems willing to pay for them. 'We the people' elected folks to 'decide how our money should be used'. That's the job of elected officials -- they're the hired help.

A 'permanent fix' would involve either eliminating programs or raising sufficient funds to actually pay for them. Which subsidies which you personally benefit from would you like to see stripped out? Deductible mortgage interest? Cheaper cars? Lower gasoline costs? Cheaper food? You're paying for all of those now.