timbowen

As a practical matter, no. Legal told me I have to implement it for all users because it covers EU citizens who might be accessing our site from or living in non EU countries.

We fixed one of the issues. I processed enough returns on refurbished units to know that there were still several bugs. One of the main complaints is that the wristband would be dead in the morning - I believe this was caused by a firmware defect that caused the bluetooth radio to blare at full strength all night. That being said this was almost a year ago so I might be misremembering specific issues. One thing is for sure though - there were bugs even after we revised the firmware.

As to fixing the firmware - that's absolutely possible although we made some non optimal decisions with the hardware itself that caused the WakeMate to waste a lot of power. That's one of the reasons why the WakeMate's battery is comically large for the amount of usage you get out of the device.

1.) LOL I dunno!

2.) I never talked to PG, I can't speak to that.

3.) The problems were absolutely cumulative over the course of development. Neither Greg nor Arun were engineers or technical in any way and the hardware developer had a full time job that was not WakeMate. I started ~1.5 months before launch and was told the hardware was functional. I managed to get the iOS version to work most of the time but the firmware was hosed in such a way that pretty much all units would fail over the course of a few months.

I used to work for WakeMate - feel free to ask me anything. This insane action from Greg doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

There is no way this product will ever ship. Greg, what are you even going to do with 150k or even 250k or 1mm? You already burned up almost a million bucks on this exact same idea when I was working for you and it was a huge waste because of your terrible execution and stubborn reluctance to seek or take any advice from anyone whatsoever.

The market has judged you and found you lacking. Cede your resources to a more efficient actor in the market and go home.

The integration process was really easy. You just include the iAd framework and then add ADBannerView objects wherever you want them. The ADBannerViews work like pretty much any other view with the exception that they must be a certain size. There are callbacks for when the banner loads to fail and if these are called we display our house ad instead of the iAd.

I found this guide to be helpful: http://useyourloaf.com/blog/2010/7/13/adding-iads-to-an-appl...

This is true, and a good point. One thing we do need, however, is to take the opinion of prominent economists with a little bit more salt. I remember when invoking the name Greenspan among those interested in economics was like invoking the Name of the Lord - there was no higher authority. Now good ol' Al is getting hung out to dry and, in my opinion, trying to shunt blame away from himself as much as possible.

There shouldn't be a cult of celebrity in any science, economics least of all. This is what the NYT author should have argued against rather than economics in general. Before Farve went to play for Minnesota, how many Packers fans do you think would have bet against his prediction in the Texas vs. Alabama game if it was a very public prediction? The line in Wisconsin would be outrageously off as bookies bumped it more and more away from Farve's prediction. Go to Vegas and it's probably a lot closer to the money. This decision distortion is a real problem that is wreaking real havoc on our system of exchange.

As in any genre there is a wide range of talent and musical ability among rap artists. The record industry is really good at printing one hit wonders and then burning them up. Those are probably the guys who are making the songs you are referring to. This is not unique to rap, it happens in pop, alternative, rock and roll, heavy metal and any other genre. I could easily say "metal is just screaming" or "alternative is all the same crappy guitar chords" and I would be kind of half right some of the time.

If you take a look at some of the more accomplished artists with staying power you will discover thoughtful lyrics and complicated music. Jay Z has been getting more and more musical over time. The American Gangster soundtrack was an explosion of funky horns and beats that really set the tone of the album to that of the film. Death of Autotune doesn't have an electronic note on the track. This is not to mention the vast pool of talent in the underground hip hop and rap scene, which is something you should really investigate if you are going to give the genre an honest examination.

If you don't care for rap music that's fine, but saying "it all sounds the same" just makes it obvious you don't ever listen to rap music. What would you think of me if I said all classical music sounds the same?

Sounds like a good opportunity for someone to undermine iTunes, or at least make a decent music synchronizing app for competing smart phones.

This doesn't seem like an outlandish bet to me. It seems to me that Facebook has, up to this point, spent much more time and energy on their core product rather than improving advertisements. Six months ago the ads were totally worthless, now I notice they are beginning to tailor their ads to my interests and my group of friends. If they continue optimizing the ads those revenues should increase.

There is also a virtually untapped market on Facebook for virtual objects. The gift system does exist, but I feel needs improvement. Social networking sites in Asia make the bulk of their money off of this feature, not ads. If FB beefs up this aspect of their business I think 2 billion by 2014 is a reasonable goal.

All that being said, the sentiment that "he is selling something" seems reasonable. They could be ramping up for an IPO or, more likely, going for another round of private investments to fuel growth.

It doesn't need to be legally enforceable, they can just kick you out of the iphone developer program, and you have little recourse.

The utility of computer labs is huge, there's no doubt about that.

What really surprises me is that only six out of over three thousand freshman ran Linux. Weak sauce! I guess coming from Carnegie Mellon University I'm used to a higher level of techno-centrism.

I have not seen a single instance of "the media" promoting these stereotypes at all. On the contrary, it seems like there is some covert Twitter media blitz going on all around me. From Comedy Central to C-SPAN there are mentions of people "twittering."

It's normal people who are "promoting myths" about Twitter, although the author does a pretty bad job dispelling those myths. I signed up for a Twitter account, but I find it totally irrelevant to me personally. It is kind of useful for publishing our updates at www.trailbehind.com, but other than that I just don't get it. Maybe, at 24, I'm just too old to tweet.

There is really no reason that I can see to try and figure out why API methods do what they do. You send it something, it sends what you want back. That's basically the nature of object oriented programming, and why it's so popular. You don't need to know the workings of an internal combustion engine to drive a car, and you don't need or want to know what your API is doing behind the scenes in my humble opinion.

Is there really a huge faction in our community who isn't in business to make money? When I left my middle class desk jockey job to work for trailbehind.com the chance (however small) to create and own a valuable business was the main motivator.

I think that the author has a fundamental misconception about what a "badge of honor" is. Soldiers don't spend months or years in the trenches with the purpose of earning "badges of honor" they go into the trenches because they have to. The badges are awarded after the fact to recognize the accomplishment of putting everything on the line for some greater purpose.

While we are not soldiers, we do risk big chunks of our life because we believe in our products and businesses. We eat Ramen Noodles and scrimp by because the pursuit of our goals require us to, not because we like it.

I also think that the author has misconstrued the "badges of honor" concept. People get badges of honor as a reward for being in the trenches, they don't go down into the trenches with the main intent of earning a badge of honor. You are in the trenches because you have to be. While

The web interview where Cramer admitted to manipulating stock values with his hedge fund seems pretty damning to me. It betrays a mindset focused on manipulation, rather than providing any kind of real economic value. While Cramer might be only one small cracked cog in the broken machine of banking, he had the opportunity to investigate and expose the inherent instability in the financial system but instead rode the wave like everyone else.

What happened to real journalism? With Uncle Rupert's claws sunk into the Wall Street Journal the future of quality investigative reporting seems dim.

Chemistry is fascinating. I'm really not too worried about mercury being the next terrorist secret weapon. It doesn't seem flasy enough to inspire terror, maybe just a creeping unease.

I think this is a very exciting development for the open source community. More and more applications are going web based, and I can see a future where the only application anyone will really need is a web browser. We already have Google docs, once that functionality improves just a little bit there's your office suite. Serve your ticket and lien database through a secure web connection or VPN, and you're good to go. Total software cost: 0.

Surely it must be cheaper to employ a couple of Linux techs than to keep bleeding money in license fees. Windows environments needs techs anyway, so most of the cost is already budgeted.

There will be some cost and security concerns, but it seems clear to me that over the long term open source is a better solution. This could even lead to government sponsored developers who are paid to improve open source projects, somewhere way down the line. Exciting stuff!

Thanks for the heads up and the link, I'll use that from now on :P

I think forcing them to boot over the network to access the test is your best bet. While QuestionMark may run in a windows VM on some machine the vast variety of different Linux/BSD distributions will make setting up that VM a nightmare.

Extremely interesting discussion in this thread. When I first started reading sho's comment I was instinctively leaning the other way, but ensuing discussion has convinced me that these millions would be much better spent on... universal healthcare for example. That would absolutely save more lives.

Interesting idea, but the presentation is remarkably unprofessional. I mean... cookies + me = job? I think that the enthusiasm and originality is great but I just don't understand the tone of the site, considering it's intended application.

This list is interesting, but it really doesn't surprise me that so many of the Google features we know and love were acquired.

Acquisition for a company like Google is smart business. While we don't know the specific dollar amount that Google paid for most of these companies, it was almost certainly less than the cost of than paying Google developers to develop these features from scratch, especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of revenue and traffic lost during the time it takes to develop the product.

Looks like an excellent product, what is the plan to generate revenue?