donniefitz2

I think this post contains an un-intentional poke at the concept of libertarian free will. That is, you must have an alternative in order to be free (and feel free, therefore faking satisfaction).

But what makes that funny is we all know that just because you have a job alternative, it doesn't make you free or happy. What truly makes you free and happy is to do what you really want to do. It has nothing to do with having an alternative.

Be careful not to become too uplifted by his words or you'll get all happy about yourself and loose your drive.

Twins may be identical physically, but they present a challenge to the assumption that being is merely physical because they are often completely different when it comes to who they are (and what is that, really?)

I have lived with twins for 3 years (married to one of them) and you couldn't find two people more different. Physically they look the same, but as far as personality, you couldn't find two people more different.

They were both "nurtured" from the same woman, same environment, yet they are opposites. I think there is an ontological question raised. Is there a non-physical component to our existence? Something to think about.

I studied Philosophy and Political Science in college and I hack for a living. There's nothing that says you must have a formal education in a particular discipline to do something as a career.

I say pursue the discipline you have the most interest and ability in.

I read a lot of articles on startups, and the take away is usually a few small nuggets of value. I think this is first article I have read in a while that has a lot of value. It was good. Read it.

Thank you for noticing that although I have not enjoyed any monetary success, I have learned a ton about business and product development.

Because of this product venture, I'm currently working on something much more promising because of the lessons I learned on this one.

I agree that there's little value in giving advice on how to fail, but that's not what I did here. I only described what I have done so far. I was very careful about not making this post prescriptive in any way. It's descriptive only.

Thank you all for you posts. I want to make it clear that I'm not making any absolute statement about anything. I just wanted to share my experience.

I know that I did a poor job of market research from the onset and that there's a long list of things I should have/should not have done to make this work. I do appreciate your opinions.

I like PHP. I'm a .Net developer, but I started out with PHP and it's great to go back and use it from time to time. PHP has come a long way in the last 5 years and from what I've seen, the quality of frameworks and applications written with it have evolved a lot as well.

Let them signup without payment information. It promotes easy signup and you are much more likely to get people to try it out. I know from experience.

Loose the free trial because you are giving a free version away which is enough to try it out.

That article was awesome. Those excerpts sound more like something from The Onion.

It's not bad. It's worth trying out anyway and appears to be much better than the previous Live search.

I couldn't agree more. Nothing's more annoying than Googling for an answer to a problem, failing to look at the source of the link and ending up at Experts Exchange. Instant back button.

I think you're spot on. And I'm a .Net developer (a bumbling fool no doubt). But really, you grasp the point best so far.

Currently working on version 2 of my startup and working full time as a freelance developer.

I think I'll stick with Assembla. It's the same concept but not as mature. Nothing against it, but it's not really all that unique.

These are all great suggestions and I'm seriously looking each of them over. Thanks to the HN community.

That's a great point. I learned with HTML, CSS, and JS too. The instant gratification was enough to make me want to learn more and once I saw the limitations of "static" content, I moved to server-side technologies.

For clarification: the kid is a boy. I would like for him to learn from the bottom-up (start at the beginning and work up from there). I will play a big role in his learning (scary, but I am a developer so I feel sort of qualified).

I can hardly remember what I did 5 minutes ago. No programmer has a mind index of all of the libraries in PHP. If you have that kind of memory, consider an extended visit to Vegas.

I have installed this version of W7 on a few machines and never encountered this message. Not to say it didn't happen, but it seems to be an exception and not the rule.

It seems to me that ruling out an OS because of a single, albeit lame, dialog box is serious hyperbole. Windows 7 is a serious advancement for Microsoft by any account.

This is a RC and it needs tuning. I'm not sure I know of an OS that "is the answer". I'm not looking for an identity in an OS. I'm looking for a useful tool. If you are looking for the answer in a computer operating system, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

Get your expectations in order and give it a fair shake.

I tried it on a small scale and it totally failed for me. Actual cold calls, if targeted correctly, can work and did drum up some good leads, but it's tedious.

And that is my future. I'll be enjoying sleeping in for the next 7 months (every chance I get), because the party's over for me soon.

That is the best blog post I've read this month. Truly helpful.

I'm faced with similar issues, but I find that by reaching out to the people and other resources around me, things arise that I would have never otherwise considered.

When you face a dead end, that's exactly when you need to tap into the relentless (never giving up) resourcefulness (looking in places you have not yet considered).

Sounds great in theory, but it's much harder in practice.

It's like starring up a 70 foot wall and wondering how to get over it.

I feel your pain, but that's what has to be done to make it all work.

This summary has struck me. I couldn't agree more about what it says and requires. Every day founders have to face the doubt inherent in what they are trying to accomplish.

But I think the hurdles are as much internal as they are external and the summary applies to both. Founders have to overcome the internal issues by being relentlessly resourceful as well as the external. "Why am I doing this?" is a question every founder is asking themselves daily because we are all sacrificing something to start our product.

Getting over the internal hurdles requires a great deal of resourcefulness merely to justify continuing the pursuit another day. "Should I quit now? Have I done everything I can to make this work?" "I can't quit yet because I haven't tried X."

You have to be resourceful to prove to yourself that you shouldn't quit just yet.

Relentless resourcefulness applies to internal factors as much as it does external factors because you have to be resourceful enough to provide yourself the impetus to continue, to keep sacrificing. "I can't quit this thing because I know there is a possibility that something I'm not thinking of will make it work. I have to find that thing."

It's true that it's not a great engineering problem, but a great business opportunity no doubt. I think your title change suggestion is accurate.

I've watched a few of this guys videos and I'm really liking them. It's cool to see someone make it with a startup but do it "quietly". Who ever heard of his company? I guess it really doesn't matter because his clients sure did.

I've been using the Silverlight version on Boxee for a few months and I have had few issues. I do think an opt-in opt-out program would have been a better move.