bdrocco
Either way... I was stuck with some domains on auto-renew I couldn't transfer out right away but today turned out to be a good reminder that I still had those last domains to transfer. Bye Bye GoDaddy!
It'd be comical though when a study puts a value to the U.S. productivity increase when youtube videos are an inaccessible distraction.
Some of those videos have sucked up millions of man-hours of viewing... if even a single digit percent of those views were by workers procrastinating, we're talking millions in lost productivity. (Per clip!)
I agree we need to keep more talented foreigners in the country, but a $100k price tag isn't the right solution. How would an immigrant save up that money while studying in the US (or while in their former country)? If he/she drops out of college they wouldn't be able to stay on their student visa...
In fact, this author's suggesting we blindly accept anyone that can pay $100k. It seems to me this approach would attract more terrorists and/or criminals with those types of resources abroad than freelancing entrepreneurs.
Nevermind that this wouldn't solve the current illegal immigration problem either.
The one common trait I've found among great entrepreneurs...? They want to change the world in a big way.
The great ones don't care about the money or being their own boss or working from wherever. And almost certainly, they love what they do precisely because they aren't sitting back cracking open a beer (no matter how high up the podium)... instead, they've got bigger things to achieve. The drive never stops.
But really I would just classify this as a #FirstWorldProblem
I agree with some of the comments here, simply because your company is an 'internet company' doesn't mean a 'Help' webpage is all you need for support. Actual personal support handling is virtually non-existent from large scale web companies and it's a disappointment.
In neither sports nor work, nobody celebrates visualizing success over actual success, people celebrate tangible accomplishments. However if you're not motivated to achieve certain goals in the first place, positive visualization obviously won't change that, it only gives you that warm fuzzy feeling this article describes.
Hacker News / Digg style... vote up the novel patents and down the obvious ones, while commenting with conflicting patents or prior art... then the examiner can use this as input.
If the system is perfected eventually that examiner could be eliminated. This also would create jobs in the private sector as companies would be inclined to hire contributors to this process to protect their interests. You obviously need transparency to see who's providing this feedback to prevent abuse, but that's a minor aspect.
Finally, IMHO software patents specifically deserve more stringent guidelines for patentability. There's no intrinsic technological worth in a major percentage of software patents. "It's software, if you want a word processor I can make you a word processor"... if you want a button to tap and order something instantly, I can make you a button. Now, if you want a button that can be clicked by millions of people over a minute, there may be some novel technology behind that. These differences need to be isolated.
I'd like to think my friends are the smartest guys on the block. ;-) We founded a startup in 2008 that had a successful M&V, but our engineering team was already tried and tested prior to the company.
However, don't assume this is a curse of "twentysomethings," this is a problem that I've seen span generations.