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This is why I love EVE Online! I haven't played since its beta, but the potential for real loss (and gain) is what makes it so enjoyable. In this way, it is a worthy successor to Ultima Online. I don't know why people play other MMOs - I just don't understand their appeal. They lack the passion, the intensity, the power of these games.

Content is neat, but layout is a little bland. Especially in terms of trying to put forth a professional image, I think there is still room to improve - clarifying the header in a nicer way, making your footer cleaned up. Nothing too hard to do, though - probably minor tweaks to a lot of themes could help.

I'm not sure that moving to Tumblr or Posterous would help, except insofar as the #1 thing about a blog: would they help you to write more / better? If so, go for it, since you could have a nice user experience there as well.

In any instance, I'd say it's worth paying $10 a year to get your own domain to mask wherever you are - whether rakhi.blogspot or .posterous or .tubmlr.

One easy to implement suggestion: for a site like this, a "read my best-of posts" section can be really helpful to engage new visitors and make them repeat visitors by seeing the best you have to offer.

Pretty much totally agree here.

I would be 75% OK using a service with such a name, but you would alienate some people for sure. Keep it in reserve, but might be worthwhile to keep thinking about some other names, too. You don't want to limit yourself based on your brand.

If you are really good, are you in a position to get some scholarships / financial aid? This would lower some of the opportunity costs of going. Now...

a) In college, you would still have a lot of free time to pursue your own projects, and could always drop out if you hit it big! It gives you a safe place to work from while giving you a chance to learn more skills, too.

b) It gives you a GREAT chance to meet other people who can help you, work with you, drop out with you, etc.

c) You can learn about other life skills, too!

Those are three good reasons that you might want to consider more seriously going to college. I feel the same way about many post-graduate experiences as you do about college, and it's important to try to see things with more shades of grey and to be more open to positive experiences.

Remember, no one is going to put you in a prison for four years, but by not going to college now (or not applying... etc) you are losing on some opportunities that you might like, even in six months. So for now, relatively easy to keep more options open.

Yes, true-crypt. Not perfect (See many critiques here) but great especially for worrying if my computer got stolen.

Looks great! Are you going to have more? I can't make it this week. You're the first Boston Properties building across from the MIT Press bookstore, right - just before Google (5 Cambridge Center).

BTW, I just checked out your site - Panjiva is a really cool idea, I want to try to use it for nothing in particular. It's so interesting that I feel I ought to try to find someone to fabricate some machine parts thousands of miles away _just because I can_! : )

I'm an ENTJ/INTJ depending on mood, but yes, this -- serious problems with the nonsense of the Myers-Briggs. Not a very good test, and grounded in nothing really sensible beyond an unhealthy adoration of Carl Jung.

Are you part of one underway, or planning on new ones?

Looks and sounds great - I can't try it out since I'm an Android user, but best of luck to you. Make an Android version soon? : )

Great piece! I love the hacking ethos of the MIT hacks / hackers. One of my recent favorites was their Harvard Master Chief / Halo 3 hack: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/25/the-best-thing-youll-see-t...

12-15% a year is very high indeed, and not a realistic expectation. Because you have a limited amount to invest, your best option may likely be to invest it in any number of index funds. These are very, very low in their expense ratios and try to track indices or sections thereof without lots of management (buying and selling, etc) of the sort that causes mutual funds to overwhelmingly underperform the broader markets.

You can open an account at ScotTrade for free, and then buy a few index funds that you like. You could either put these into mutual funds, like Vanguard's VFINX US S&P fund, or buy exchange-traded funds which track indices as well.

Investing early is wise, the key thing is not to try to beat the markets (at least not with YOUR money on the line!) and also note that volatility will make you unhappy if you check often. You'll be up and down but, over the long term, hopefully up. But if you check frequently, the "down" times will make you unhappier than the happy-times will make you happy. So, set it and forget it, if you take a diversified and relatively low-risk approach.

For 15k, you could invest across bonds, US stocks, international stocks, emerging markets, and more, all without significant cost or overhead -- if you play the broader markets, instead of trying to pick winners.

Most importantly, keep educating yourself, and not just what other people say on random internet forums ;)

In China, I think you can look at some interesting historical contingencies which led to more engineers getting into politics. See also, the unique nature of CCP party membership and political life, etc.

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

There is a difference between:

Working a "real job" first (e.g., 2+2), vs. grad school w/o experience

and

Getting an MBA, and getting a super-top elite MBA.

These distinctions aside, I do not think that an MBA is often worth the cost in both dollars and opportunities. I see too many of my peers just thinking they'll work for two years, get an MBA, do something cushy. Even if it's true, it seems... unfulfilling.

Purely from a domain perspective, I too have never had any problems with Dreamhost - fine support, reasonable price, no problem transferring, etc.

One good bonus is free proxy registration; valuable if you don't want spam, but will still allow you to forward emails or whatnot received.

Because you did not specify "fastest," the easiest way is to work hard, save a lot, and invest early. In a few decades you will be a millionaire without any problems.

Well, many say that a start-up is like getting married. Therefore, it would be a lot like polygamy...?

This said, so many jobs for 23-28 year olds who are high-achieving driven people (but maybe not entrepreneurs) have similarly crushing hours, so, it's not like start-ups are such an unfair choice.

I don't know from experience, but I think #1 would be talking with your spouse and making sure at least there is a baseline understanding.

25 Comments, no one has yet pointed out the fact that one might not want to be Larry Ellison... ;)

That said, I would like to have Larry Ellison's money.

I thought these were terrible - just grafitti / vandalism. Acting macho on some of the ads and declaring "hey, we killed trees, definitely not recycled!" wasn't really warming my heart to Mafia Wars either, whether true or not. The glued-to-the-sidewalk effect was just lame, though!

You can also fire people before any incentives / bonuses would be received... though I don't know that that would really move the needle.

The first step is knowing that you want to make a change, kudos on that! Great questions and some good answers here, look forward to reading more. As someone light on the programming side, always interested in responses on this kind of question. Especially answers that go beyond, "hey, go learn to program more."

That is an _amazing_ "we're hiring" image! I didn't even need the rest of the page; why would I, with a graphic like that? Truly remarkable work, dropbox.

This is a big deal! It's not something that is reflected well on the market, IMO. Important resource that isn't priced effectively, doesn't consider the future... definitely not the only thing that fits that bill, but this one is a little more cut and dry.

However, it's a bit hard to bet on the price of helium. Most of the main producers are reasonably diversified among other gas-products etc.

Not the most elegant solution, especially from an encoding / portability perspective.

BUT, happy they're stream-able period! I will sadly not be in the area, but look forward to seeing it online.

"Go West, young man, and grow up with the country."

Seems to still hold true... the countries in question just might be different.

It sounds like there is some back-room drama, the kind of thing that 10 years down the road might help explain what's going on.

This said, I think Skype could still be quite successful in their IPO efforts. Market difficulties are unfortunate, but doesn't mean that 100% of IPOs are going to end badly.

Signed up! I would be away at school most likely, but keen to be in the loop.

Put it all in the cloud!

Only partly facetious.

Colleges breaks down when trying to turn qualitative experiences into quantitative data, I don't like how the models come out. (Doesn't mean they don't end up successful, obviously.)

My fave approach in the space recently has been Unigo.com, nice aggregation of user generated content to great effect.

See also:

?intitle:index.of? mp3

# -FrontPage-" inurl:service.pwd

intitle:"Index of" config.php

Not to mention the credit card number hacks... :)

Cute - submitted something.

My annoyance is how many things are owned by squatters. Domain tasting / kiting really caused so much collateral damage :(