bls
If you are willing to let go of romanticism and fear, you can find algorithms for getting laid by searching Google. I personally know a few people that have implemented those algorithms and they all succeed frequently. I know a guy whose marriage was founded (unknowingly to his wife) on such Google-found advice.
There is a reason "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is one of the best-selling books of all time. Reading just that one book will get most people all the sex and "friends" they want if they follow its advice. I recommend everybody to try it if they are feeling really down on themselves or really frustrated. It can be a life-changing experience.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of downsides to reading an (e-)book about getting laid or making friends too. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
Can't a big publisher come out and subsidize an e-book reader? For example, "Buy some e-books from us whose printed editions would add up to $300, and we'll give you an e-book reader free."
There are a lot of business people that have become programmers by building increasingly sophisticated Excel spreadsheets or Access databases. This type of "casual" programming is becoming increasingly common.
That said, I think that DabbleDB might have a more successful approach--data first, instead of code first. That approach made MS Access very successful. Casual programmers care a lot about their data, but code is just a nuisance that is tolerated to get the data to "work." People want assurance that their data is always there, even when the code is broken. In MS Access it is trivial to back up your database and view/hand-edit your data.
Client-side Javascript is the QBasic of this decade--it is the first language of a lot of (most?) self-taught programmers. It makes a lot of sense to offer these people a place to expand into server-side software.
And, Server-side Javascript is spiking in popularity and utility. I am working on a project in this space as well.
Imagine the car is running in a vacuum and gets 30MPG. Now, add normal air resistance. It will not get 30MPG anymore. Now, add something else that further increases wind resistance. The car will get even fewer miles per gallon.
If your goal is to get free electricity by leaching off of cars, without regard to the environment, then it might work. But, there is a huge fixed cost to manufacture, transport, install, and test the machinery, and a non-negligible variable cost in maintaining the system.
I watched many of those people graduate with B.S. degrees in Computer Science from my university. If I ever need to hire a developer, I will actively avoid anybody that graduated from my own university. Once I realized that, I quit.
Having said that, some places have rules that won't allow them to hire you without a degree. If you want to work for these kinds of places, you need the degree. However, I think that a degree requirement is a good indicator of a bad place to work.
You get 15 minutes or so to present your idea. One minute of that presentation should be about how much money you need to get started. I would not inflate that number, but I would not artificially constrain it to fit the "fixed" limit that YC has. I can't speak for YC, but I would guess that they aren't going to turn down a deal just because the founders demonstrated a need for $7500 per person instead of $5000 each, or whatever the details are. Similarly, if your idea is the best idea they've ever seen, then are they really going to be so rigid about the percentage? Especially if you offer a percentage before they do?
I realize PG said flat out "no" above. But, doesn't Mr. Graham strike you as somebody that has a "rules are meant to be broken" mentality? Don't you think that this is exactly the type of arbitrary rule that is easily broken without too much fuss?
First, you are referring to informal situations. But, this is (supposed to be) a professional setting, and the rules are much different in a professional setting. Generally, you want to refer to the femininity of women as little as possible in a professional setting, and when you do have to refer to their femininity, you must be extra formal.
Here is the rule I go by: never call a woman a girl in a situation where it would be inappropriate to call her a bitch (she better be a good friend). And, never call a black man a boy because it is almost as bad as "nigger."
If you don't understand the reasoning behind these rules then you should find a good friend to explain them to you very carefully.
/ the more you know
Every weblog with AdSense advertising looks better (design wise) with AdBlock+ turned on; there is more negative space and less visual noise.
It seems like you feel that the API and the highly structured organization of the data is what differentiates you from Wikipedia. But, Wikipedia already has huge mindshare, and there are very few people that would ever your added value features. That means advertising is not a viable revenue source. Charging for access is out unless you change the name; who would you pay for something labeled "free"? So, what's the business model?
The people that WOULD need the data to be very structured need to have some assurance that the data is reliable. Usually, somebody who has spent a lot of time and effort to build an accurate data set will want a return on their investment. I could see somebody building a business by aggregating sets of reliable data from reputable data sources (universities, government laboratories, medical journals, etc.), and renting out the data sets to users and/or charging subscription fees. That is what junk mail companies due with mailing lists, for example. But, it is hard to imagine giving it all away for free and still making a living.
Without using TLS, you cannot prevent the user's ISP from recording--and even reselling--your user's search histories. Similarly, your hosting providers could be doing the same thing. Keep in mind that hosting and bandwidth is a multi-level value chain--your host is probably renting space and bandwidth from somebody else, who is renting from somebody else, who is renting from somebody else. Any one of those companies and/or their rogue employees can collect, re-transmit, prevent, and/or redirect (e.g. man-in-the-middle) your user's queries without your knowledge.
Where is your privacy policy?
And, what is your hosting provider's policy? I found out recently that my hosting provider refused to make any guarantees; that means that I cannot make any guarantees either, since my hosting provider has full access to my server.
I never want to work with anybody that has that attitude. You don't have to time even READ (let alone politely respond to) a "thank you?" But, I bet you have plenty of time to read and respond to everything on digg, reddit, slashdot, news.yc, and facebook.
Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the site design. I am not a designer so I can't offer anything constructive. You need some professional help.