synnik

Reduce it enough, and Wolfram Alpha generates a visual representation of a plane. But this is also a puzzle - I think the key isn't getting an equation out of it, it is figuring out where they want us to apply said equation.

Let's be clear - the article is about raising a kid with the skills and capabilities of an entrepreneur. But be wary of targeting your child's future career path. That is a very dangerous game to play, as your kids need to be free to make their own path in the world, not follow your script.

I do not think being an entrepreneur is right for everyone. If everyone was cut out to do it, YC wouldn't need to question their applicants so carefully.

And as a parent, I don't want my child jumping down a path that doesn't match who they are, and therefore won't make them happy.

Ok, but that sure sounds like a design flaw. I would have expected that they would still have an option to push the new products live at the time of their choosing vs. disabling online purchases of their existing products.

I would think an appropriate separation of content from the site itself would allow them to reach their same business goals without deliberately giving themselves an outage.

Wait a sec - "it was always an interesting experience to turn the store back on after Steve Jobs walked off stage following one of his keynote presentations"

??

Does Apple seriously turn off their store while Jobs talks? Or is he talking about pushing new content out based on announcements?

The former just sounds... Odd.

There are two completely different conclusions that I would draw from his facts:

1) Most bugs are in code. But it might not be your code. Your code layers itself on top of many other layers of code that are outside of your control. Learning to deal with that will make a difference in your work.

2) Know how everything works. I am always hocked at people who claim to be web developers who don't even understand how an HTTP request/response works, much less what your browser does with the results. It is one of my interview questions for tech folk - I ask them to explain to me exactly what happens on the server when a browser sends it a request. Few people can give much detail here. Most can only give a generic explanation of the actions taken, if that.

There is an underlying demographic issue here. Startups tend to cater to people who have already made a lifestyle choice to embrace pervasive technology in their lives.

I am likely an outlier on HN, in that I consciously do not use technology for my "life". I go home to my kids, we play in the backyard, we go on walks, we mow the lawn, we play board games, and read books.

So do you want to know the 2 startups that DO help me?

1) Mint.com - I do need financial management, and I love mint.com for that.

2) ServiceMagic.com - I spend 5 minutes online, and within a couple hours have someone doing home maintenance work for me. THAT simplifies my life.

So whose life are you really trying to improve? Mobile hipsters? Or working folk? The problems are very different.

As a web programmer with a degree in Fine Arts... YES. They do.

When you really get down to it, the web is about using visual media to communicate ideas. So is Art. Likewise, both disciplines have a heavy technical component. Both have mixed audiences... most people care about the tech side, some just want to experience the final product. Both disciplines also start with a blank page, and build it into the final product. The final products of both disciplines are greatly improved when the audience is engaged, and can be revolutionary when the audience collaborates.

So do web designers need to understand art? Yes!

As someone who has been a teacher and trainer of various kinds, removing your own bias from your teaching does not come naturally or easily. So I think the points made (while exaggerated) have at least a kernel of validity. However, ranting on a blog is not a productive response. Instead, I'd document them as constructive criticism and send them to Mr. Khan directly. I've got to believe that anyone who is passionate enough about education to put the Khan academy together in the first place is also willing to hear suggestions on improvements.

This isn't the first anti-college discussion to come up recently... not even the first in the last 24 hours.

What it boils down to for me is that SOME colleges are not helping their students. People are using this partial failure, and extrapolating it into these arguments that all higher education is worthless.

This isn't good logic, much less good advice.

But most .NET apps that I see have stuck to the best practice of splitting the presentation layer from your other layers. Re-coding just the UI into HTML5 could very well become a standard, especially if it enables apps to easily move to more phones, tablets, or whatever else gets invented in the coming years.

So it is probably true that .NET jobs will not go away. But that 90% mark on job postings could very well shrink significantly.

"It gives you better frameworks for thinking."

This is vitally important.

People who think school should prepare your for a job are missing the point. What school does is increase your capacity for thought, teaching you new methods. You cannot get out of higher education without learning multiple ways to approach, de-construct, and re-construct problems and questions.

My biggest problem with recruiters comes to my SharePoint skills. I get a ton of calls, but they don't seem to understand, "No, I don't want a SharePoint job. I dislike it intensely."

You misunderstand.

I don't care whether or not there is an outage. I care that people are professional in their work. Passing the buck is unprofessional. Accepting the responsibility is what matters, and if they decide not to fix it, then say so and own that choice.

Service providers are responsible for their service only. Not the products you layer on top of them.

Doing free favors doesn't mean you should drop your level of professionalism.

This has always bugged me - as owner of a product, YOU are ultimately responsible for its availability. If you chose a bad service provider, sure, you'll have outages. But accept accountability, say you are working on it, and fix it.

True, that is one of my concerns. My mitigation of that risk is that one of the walls (to the left of the monitors) is nothing but cloth - in an emergency, I just pull the staples out and walk right out.

It was somewhat difficult to get pics of it, as it is a compact space, but I took a shot at it. (Pardon the pun.)

The "door" from my storage room: http://hikingdave.smugmug.com/photos/i-KNkxxsb/0/M/i-KNkxxsb...

Looking in... Sorry that it is blurry, but you can see that is a not a huge space. I have a gaming chair to sit on, and I keep a big blanket in there. It gets cold, even in summer: http://hikingdave.smugmug.com/photos/i-kpfwhfL/0/M/i-kpfwhfL...

The actual setup. 2 monitors, a laptop table, and my work laptop: http://hikingdave.smugmug.com/photos/i-Lxmh7hZ/0/M/i-Lxmh7hZ...

Will do. I actually am downtown today, but I will get some pics when I get home tonight.

I did something similar - I finished the area under my basement stairs, hung monitors from the stairs above me, and put fabric on all the walls for soundproofing.

I have to climb through my storage area, under a shelf, and through a small hole to get in... but that also means I cannot easily get out and take a break. I just keep on working.

Likewise, I am so hidden that my kids just assume that I am downtown in my office, and they do not interrupt my work. And my wife won't come in either, as she get claustrophobic.

I am easily 3x as effective when working from home now.

Even if this were an otherwise good investment, I want know know: What stops the guys who run bitcoin from simply shutting it off?

EDIT: And before people reply, "it is P2P", someone runs the web site. Someone owns the code repository. Or some group. There will always be a small group with power to muck with the system. What stops abuse?

That is where you and I disagree. I don't think the verb "watch" has any such inherent implication. Our society has given that meaning to the word in very recent times. Rather than dismiss my point, I think the modification of the meaning has proven it.

I am on the fringes of BI at my company, and do not claim to be an expert. But to me, the value in the BI suites is not the UI, nor the platform on which BI runs. It is the integration points to everything else. This article told me very little about that aspect of the open source tools.

Marketing surely takes advantage of it, but I think this has more to do with the addictive, yet passive nature of TV, where we let it push images into our brains.

My favorite example (for which I've already given away the punchline) is the following:

Ask a random group of people to imagine that they are watching a baseball game. Give them a minute to think about it. Then ask them -- Are you in the stadium? Or watching it on TV? The amount of people who visualize TV as their first reaction can be frightening.

I've been working my butt off in the corporate world, trying to save a year of living expenses for my family of 5 in the suburbs, in hopes of quitting and doing my own thing once I had that cushion.

I hit the 9 month mark, then had major health issues that are wiping a lot of it out.

At first, I was fairly devastated. Then someone told me, "Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that savings is for?"

And you know what, it is. Sure, I wanted to quit my job in the near future. Sure, I wanted to be the rare married family guy who still had the flexibility to do startup work.

But how blessed and thankful I am that I am "only" going to have 3 months stored away after this is all done.

It is always good to keep things in perspective.

The analogy in my mind has always been that of the command line. Most users these days do not use the command line. But many tech people still do, as it is a very effective tool.

Likewise, the address bar - I still hand-type most of the sites I regularly use, because I can type them faster than navigating my various bookmark folders. Which also negates any inspiration to find better bookmarking tools.

I also have the unfortunate job of maintaining SharePoint sites, for which there are many standard URL strings I can throw onto a site that will get me to various admin pages.

I am sure other platforms have similar structures, where hand-typed addresses can manipulate the site in some way to the benefit of those who support it.

And maybe that is where Google will end up - with the address bar being the command-line-equivalent for their web-based OS.

... or Beakman's World, Dr. Who, and McGyver.

I've always offered to take on equal care of our kids. I just have failed at that whole lactating thing.

So in all seriousness, there are biological factors at play, and our parenting choices DO impact our availability. You certainly can make different parenting choices than we do, but every parent I know puts kids before work.

Disruption needs to be driven from industry knowledge. Certainly technology will be the major enabler of disruption, and may be the catalyst to disruptive ideas, but it industry insiders know where to make the changes and how to achieve acceptance.

So raising your hand and offering to build the tech is not the hard part. The hard part is finding those insiders who know every detail of the industry, but do not buy into the status quo.

IBM cares about driving technology towards its own products, to thereby improve its own bottom line and shareholder value. It will promote and/or trash even its own product lines based on sales, not technical quality. It is a corporation. Why would you expect anything different?

You are right at that corner where this will become possible. Before 18 months, there is no way. But at 18 months, they usually can play independently for longer periods, and you should be able to put some time into work. The older they get, the easier it gets.

But I have two recommendations:

1) Find activities they can get caught up in for long periods of time - drawing, crafts, or something like that. You need them to be nearby, but independently occupied.

2) Find work that doesn't require being "in the zone". You won't get a solid 2 hour block of time. You will get interrupted often. If you choose work that will suffer from frequent interruptions, you will struggle to succeed.

I recommend that people go one level deeper than this. Keeping things running smoothly is the lowest level requirement of IT work, not a major accomplishment.

The really great IT folk that I know spend 5-10 hours a week on trouble tickets, keeping things running, etc. The other 30-40 hours are spent on projects, improving the business. And those projects get visibility.

So you have the guy in the corner who is so good that everything runs smoothly, and nobody knows he is there. Or the guy next to him who chooses to do that... and then even more.

Guess which guy really deserves more recognition?