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How do you know who he follows?

You hate Twitter because you don't get it. That's fine. I just don't get why you got 7 points for this invective...

You are in the UK? Perhaps, after collecting some more feedback from other companies, you should add your perspective to the prevailing wisdom here. It sounds like the Silicon Valley software culture may be a bit more accepting of startup experience than in the UK.

That said, it may be beneficial for you to think about how you are selling yourself and your experience.

To me, "dead" means something like "checkmated". "X is dead" means that X is in a situation that it can't get out of. Can you please point me to your definition?

People misunderstood PG's essay because he misstated his thesis. "Dead", put simply, was the wrong word to use.

Microsoft is not "dead" any more than Apple was dead in the mid to late nineties (and boy, was that a popular statement at the time).

Microsoft still has cash, people, and a position in the industry that, with the right leadership, can be turned around to be competitive with Google, Amazon and Apple.

Please back up all prognostications with evidence, or submit yourself to wrongtomorrow.com :)

Now I'm really curious. This was on the front page a few hours ago, now it's dead. What special powers does one need to kill a link? Is Hacker News being gamed already, the current solution being editorial oversight?

To be fair, the humor piece about a grad student's day also made the front page and had about the same intellectual value as this one did. But it was better written and better targeted to this community.

It seems that the community (not just this one) is a fickle mistress. I'm really curious how a system can be built to stabilize it.

This is hacker news?

Yup, ad networks and analytics are pretty straighforward platform plays. Facebook had them too. On the web, Google owns one of each.

Well, Skype has the network effect going for it. And while iPhone has its quirks and drawbacks, the idea of VOIP on your handheld is pretty compelling.

Right, everything's out there if you're willing to dig for it. It would be nice to have everything in one place, though. I'm not saying it's hard, it would just be nice if it were all organized ahead of time.

Such strong language. I did pose it as a parenthetical question...

Anyway, I think automated grading could work for anything math-based, as well as for some computer programs. Consider that much of learning is done through homework and exercises that build upon previous exercises. I spent many hours learning by working through problems and checking my answers with an answer guide. (And being infuriated when I found mistakes in the answer guide!) Doing homework isn't a complete education, but it sure is a part of one. And yes, as long as the exercises are well designed, they make you able to think.

Needless to say, grading essays and whatnot is another ballgame altogether.

I agree with you, it's not about the degree itself or the certification. It's about the education, and the confidence it gives you knowing that you've completed certain coursework that others in the field think is important.

As a scaled-back example, I worked through the Stanford iPhone Programming course. It was great, even without videos of the lectures or being able to ask questions. The slides and exercises provided context, structure, introduced material appropriately, etc. Much better than what I'd been able to piece together through tutorials and sample code from Apple. In the end, it was nice to know that I had the same basis that the Stanford students had when they worked on their class projects. Those projects got written up on Techcrunch, too. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/stanford-students-relea...

I think there's an opportunity to craft some sort of DIY degree programs, cobbled together from online lectures, assignments (with automated grading?), readings, and help forums. Perhaps it would just be a feature of a site like this, but I personally would love to see something like that.

Very nicely done. I would add 404 and other error checking as a premium feature if you haven't already done so.

Or you could just knuckle down and work. I cant think of many times a site justified more than a few visits a day

Yeah. Especially when you consider that the shuffle is (was) probably the ipod best suited for workouts. Oh well, good thing my old shuffle works fine. :)

So you have to use their earbuds? Hrm.

We actually have very similar tastes. I guess I just need a garage. :)

I get where you're coming from, but that's quite a leap. Newer development doesn't imply sterile wasteland. A lot of suburbs are sterile, for sure. But a lot of urban development integrates quite nicely with the surrounding area, often adding to the appeal of the neighborhood. eg: Church Corner in Cambridge. Then there's the full-on live/work/play development like Atlantic Station in midtown Atlanta. Both areas are quite vibrant.

Agreed, the park system and the walkability of Boston is great. The problems come when you want to drive somewhere or find an affordable place near the subway with all modern kitchen and laundry stuff. We could do so much better, just tear down all the old 2 and 3 story buildings and build bigger, better ones....

Education is an industry. Ideas are not, there is no marketplace for ideas, etc.

Old vs. new is just a matter of taste. The overriding value is whether something works or not. In general, the technical people I've met have very little patience for things that don't work, regardless of when they were built.

Those things are great, and Boston does have its unique advantages. Digging your car out of the snow, slipping on ice, and gloomy days aren't. After 3 (ok, 2.8) winters here, those are the things that made me finally understand why people don't like winter.

We should be realistic about two things:

1. Saying that Boston is the center of ideas is lacking. Ideas aren't an industry, the way movies, finance, or tech is. Also, ideas are cheap. It's the vetting and execution of ideas that is valuable.

2. The quality of life issues need to be addressed. It's embarrassing that MIT students leave for Google, Facebook, etc., but I can also understand why. Aside from Kendall, the Boston area feels old, expensive, somewhat dilapidated, miserable in the winter. That's going to turn off a lot of people.

Wrong again. Harvard and MIT were founded in 1636 and 1861. Stanford and UC Berkeley were founded in 1885 and 1868. The Boston area saw much of its population growth occur in the 19th century. The Bay Area saw much of its growth in the 20th.

So, the Boston area has had more time with its universities, rich people, and population base to develop. Yet Silicon Valley developed faster and came to be the bigger innovation center. Again, I suggest there's something else at work besides the presence of top-flight universities, rich people, and time.

What is interesting is that New England was a major force in innovation during the second half of the 19th century, helping to drive the industrialization of the US. So, whatever factor that brought innovation to the Bay Area had to have been strong enough to unseat the existing innovation centers.

Great job. The buttons look great for such minimal effort. Suggestions for next steps:

1. Add an easy way to get hover and pushed states for buttons. Basically, provide some clever defaults that allow the user to get all 3 at once with minimal work.

2. Put in a paypal or tip jar link (it can't hurt, right?)

3. Add a pretty attribution link, "Buttons by Da Button Factory" or something.

Right, that's exactly my point. None of those places can really compare with the size and power of Silicon Valley. The fact that there's only one Silicon Valley is proof enough. The rest are smaller tech hubs. So there must be some other factor working in favor of Silicon Valley.

"The organic way to do it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live."

Obviously not the case. We can just go down the list of top universities and look at the ones that are in desirable places that aren't Silicon Valley. We can even have a laugh at all the names people came up with, like Silicon Alley, Silicon Hills, etc.

One very important reason is that the tech talent in the top tech hubs is old-growth, and recycles between all the different tech companies. And it's huge. Funding 1,000 startups for just 5 years still seems very, very small compared to the existing ecosystem in Silicon Valley, let alone the logistics of finding enough of them, vetting, competing with other funds, etc.

I had a frustrating experience with the site. Took me longer to get what I wanted than if I had gone to Kayak (the market leader) or Jetblue (that normally runs my best fare).

What, if I may ask, was the vision and rationale behind this approach?

How about putting [joke] or something in the title, so those of us short on time can skip it?

I think you nailed the problem with this type of software -- they lag behind the cutting edge because they copy features from the leaders rather than innovate on their own. (There are some exceptions to that, though, in the case where the project is driven by someone ambitious and passionate.)

I think the point is that they provide free alternatives to the majority of users who need to use them, but who don't need the full feature set of a pay version. I use gimp and oocalc all the time, but I'm not a power user, so they tend to work out just fine.