jfricker

Hucksters are opportunists.

Conservatives expressing concerns are almost always a turn off.

Touche! :)

This needs Dwolla.com support.

"Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a 1970 Oldsmobile station wagon roaring down the highway at 70MPH, filled with 8 inch tapes."

The context of that is entirely different than a "do we need QA" context. "Think and Analyze" is an abstract philosophy, not a process for engineering.

I'd say that if you have a T&A team it would be great to measure and publish your defect rate. Of course, if you just have better than average coders, then naturally your defect rate can be low.

But even a low defect rate does not preclude having a formal QA process. Even the best coders in the world can ship the wrong product when the specifications are wrong.

Sorry to hear that! Sounds like time to look for a new job as the best of days are behind you now.

I used to run a QA department for a large e-commerce company and love what this article has to say. Nothing gets executive attention like putting a dollar value on downtime (like $1k per minute on a slow day).

A sysadmin knows and loves the OS. Can script to craft utilities for repetitive tasks. Can field strip and installation down to device drives. Can provision identical systems in his/her sleep. Can solve critical problems under pressure. Is not afraid of doing it live. Will argue for a test lab endlessly. Has read the Bash man page. Favors practicality over aesthetics. Uses the right tool.

Seems to me that Dwolla.com is the way to go. Payment cards online are going away.

Well the tax issue really does add to the likelihood. So what happens, Hastings retires?

If you are starting a technical company you will need more than a passing familiarity with technology. To be successful as a software company you will need to assess the quality of the code you receive as well as need to know enough to manage a software development project.

To think that you can contract a coder and get a company back is fairly naive.

Looks like the aerial camera operator stuck his gum in the wrong place. Har har.

Or perhaps the home owner was sunbathing and asked Google to obfuscate for the good of mankind.

Also, plan on a long term relationship. "Rent" sounds like you'll toss the sysadmin away and when new work pops up you'll just fetch another one. Don't do that. Establish a relationship as you may grow into needing a lot of work done.

Without any context about the nature of the start up, the product line and business, this advice is simply nonsense.

I don't think you want to "rent a sysadmin" (that sounds real low brow to me). Instead look for a contact sysadmin but first make a list of the tasks you want to hand off. If it's a logical grouping you may find that a managed host can take care of you (like SliceHost or DreamHost). If not, then use that as a job posting a la 'Seeking Linux Contractor' and screen carefully. Your best candidate will likely have a couple long term clients they take care of a little room for a new one.

Fair enough. I did continue - while the pedagogy is one thing, I still find the whole idea dubious. See my (slightly) earlier reply in the thread.

"that challenging kids and allowing them to excel is considered child abuse."

Actually that's nothing like my sentiment. There is an age and time appropriateness that shouldn't be overlooked. Immersive study is excellent - my own daughter had my support to immerse into Argentina for 6 months when she was only 17 and I certainly wouldn't have considered it unless she had life skills, coping skills and emotional maturity.

But, plunking a kindergartener into an immersive foreign language and culture environment is dubious wisdom.

While parenting is most certainly not deterministic, it does seem to me that the child (especially the youngest) experienced quite a bit of unnecessary suffering so that the author could proceed with an experiment. That the suffering ended with fairly positive results is as serendipitous as any non-deterministic process.

(edited for some grammar)

Sounds so much like child abuse I couldn't get very far.

Odd that the article is missing any of Gordon Moore's quotes on mistakes:

“One thing a leader does is to remove the stigma of mistakes. People who are afraid of making mistakes all the time just don’t try anything.”

and my fav

“If everything you try works, then you are not trying hard enough.”

Disaster is only one obvious use case.

How about "oppressive government threw the kill switch".

Or, "profit mongering telco under built facilities".

Peer-to-peer relay messaging is a good concept, but in any use case it will need to be ubiquitous (i.e. built into the OS) for it to be effective.

Humor? Over 60 million victims of World War II and their living ancestors surely would disagree.

Use it to teach history. If that's not your bag, give it away.

Actually civil disobedience is the act of committing a crime for moral, ethical, or conflicting legal reason. And it is salient. The motivation is in part "to commit this crime I seek to prevent or change a worse crime". To say that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of civil disobedience is to say that they are motivated by a cause.

Personally, I have no idea what motivates Anonymous or if they feel morally obligated to act. It's just as likely that they believe they can commit a crime without penalty. The actions of the FBI are, in part, to deter future individuals from participating in Anonymous coordinated attacks by reminding people that they are not that anonymous and there are consequences to one's actions.

Gandhi, King and other activists all were willing to suffer the consequences of their actions. They were motivated by a principle higher than blind obedience after all.

Defending? No. Stating an observation that tyrannical institutions can use Anonymous as a pretense to arrest anyone with a computer. At least in the USA there is a shred of evidentiary requirement, but much of the world is not so lucky.

I suppose it's arguable that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of "Civil Disobedience". Perhaps it's more along the lines of "vandalism". Philosophically speaking, that is.

Anonymous civil disobedience just gives the powers-that-be the excuse to arrest anyone they choose.

Criminals is criminals.

I'd be precise about the plans - "May and June 2012" and so on.